


By saving what we love

by DyadsAreForever



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Solo Lives, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost(s), My First AO3 Post, Please be understanding and gentle (tall is optional), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, more plot than smut, they are not virgins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:42:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyadsAreForever/pseuds/DyadsAreForever
Summary: Rey has just healed Kylo and flown off in his TIE. Kylo has had his self-imposed memory walk with Han and thrown his lightsaber into the sea. But the rest of the gang is on the Falcon with no idea that any of that just happened. Here’s what happens next.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 260
Kudos: 434
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics, The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition





	1. Kef Bir

**Author's Note:**

> Cover art by me. Come say hi on [tumblr](https://dyadsareforever.tumblr.com/)!

Wave after wave crashed over the _Falcon_ , and the entire ship rocked and groaned under the barrage. Finn could sympathize with the old freighter; the hits just kept coming. But she’d have to hold together a bit longer. They all would.

He barreled into the cockpit, trailing puddles in his wake. “Poe, Chewie, wait! We can’t leave yet.”

Poe shook his head without turning around. His hands flew across the control panels. “What are you talking about, buddy? The entire galaxy is about to get blown to hell. We gotta go. Now!”

“Poe, trust me, I have a feeling—damn it, Chewie!” 

The Wookiee roared what was definitely not an apology for almost taking Finn’s head off with a swipe of a long, hairy arm toward the ramp controls.

Another wave sluiced over the top of the ship and rained down over the viewport. When it cleared, all three occupants of the cockpit saw the last thing they needed right now.

Kylo Ren stood in front of the _Falcon._ He began to lift both of his hands.

“Kriff kriff _kriff_!” Poe shouted. “Chewie, shields! Kriff, do shields even work against the Force?”

Instinctively, Finn ducked too, but then the Supreme Leader of the First Order looked straight at him...and slowly placed his hands behind his head. Then he bent his legs and, even more slowly, sank to his knees.

“What the…” Poe muttered.

“He’s saying something. Can you tell what he’s saying?” Finn asked.

“I always have trouble understanding this guy,” Poe muttered, but Chewie mewled something and stood up. “Uncle?” Poe asked as he followed the Wookiee out of the cockpit.

Through the rain, Finn saw a slight figure striding across the deck and stopping less than one lightsaber length away from Kylo Ren. “Jannah,” he whispered.

He ran, slipping and sliding on the wet floors. He made it outside and ground to a halt next to Chewie and Poe. Jannah had the muzzle of a blaster pressed directly against Kylo Ren’s forehead. The man didn’t move a muscle to defend himself. 

“Don’t,” Finn said, surprising even himself. 

Jannah pressed the blaster even harder against Ren’s forehead. “Why not? We take him out and it’s all over.”

Finn started forward, Poe right on his heels. “You pull that trigger and it will never be over. Not in our lifetimes,” Finn said.

Jannah chewed on her lip for a moment, then nodded and stepped away. Poe took her place, crouching down to Ren’s level. “This time I think you should talk first,” Poe said.

The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from Ren’s hair and down his chin. “Rey is in danger,” he said.

“No kidding,” Poe replied. “We’re _all_ in danger. From _you_.”

“Not anymore,” Ren said. His voice rasped against his throat, as if he’d been screaming. Something was different about his face.

“You can imagine why that would be hard to believe,” Poe said.

Ren sighed, a movement that rolled through his entire massive torso. It was the scar, the one Rey gave him on Starkiller. That’s what was different about his face: it was completely healed. 

“My mother is dead,” he said.

A cold fist gripped Finn’s heart; beside him, Chewie let loose a haunting cry and began tearing at his own fur. 

Poe just shrugged. “My condolences?”

“You’re lying,” Finn whispered. 

Ren finally looked up, and it was like the general was looking out through his eyes. “You know I’m not,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Poe asked.

“Leia…” Finn gasped.

“Wait, _what_?” 

Ren lowered his hands from behind his head, but they remained balled in fists at his sides. “There’s no time for this. You can verify it with your base on the way.”

“Wait, you’re…” Poe stuttered. “And Finn, you...you _knew_? Chewie?”

Chewie shook his head and continued to wail, crumpled in a furry heap on the wet deck.

“On the way where?” Finn asked.

“To Exegol. To Rey,” Ren said. “Otherwise, my mother died for nothing.”

“Are you kidding? You’re under arrest, buddy. You’re...you’re... _fuck_ , you’re Ben Solo? _Kylo Ren is Ben Solo?_ ”

“That’s not the only reason, is it?” Finn said. He saw the gaping hole in Ren’s uniform, the edges cauterized in a frighteningly familiar way. And he saw the perfect, undamaged flesh beneath. Just like his face, there was no scar.

Kylo Ren’s jaw worked, every muscle tensing by turns. “She’s not herself. Please,” he said.

Finn nodded. “We’re coming with you.”

“You can’t help her,” Ren snapped, maybe out of habit. “I don’t...I don’t even know if I can help her.”

“We’ll find out. Together,” Finn said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“ _So_ under arrest,” Poe muttered as Ren stood up.

Finn turned to head back to the ship, and Jannah grabbed his elbow. “Are you sure about this?” she hissed.

“I’ve got a feeling,” Finn said.

“What’s he doing?”

Finn turned around and saw Kylo Ren waiting for Chewbacca. The Supreme Leader was a tall man, but even he had to crane his neck to meet the towering Wookiee’s eyes.

“Chewie,” Kylo Ren whispered.

Chewie had his bowcaster slung across his back, and it stayed there. One hand reached up and rested on top of the Supreme Leader’s head. Finn couldn’t make out what Kylo Ren said then—half of his words were whispered and the other half were uttered in halting but clear Shyriiwook—and then the Wookiee ruffled the man’s wet hair and pulled him into a crushing embrace.

“Uncle Chewie,” Poe muttered. “So, _so_ under arrest. As soon as this is done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been reading your wonderful fics for years. After TLJ, I started writing my own canon-compliant multi-chapter called “Bound for Home.” I enjoy the challenge (and the nerdy research) of writing canon-compliant stories. I was waiting for TROS (and the Rise of Kylo Ren comic books) in order to keep the fic as close to canon as possible and answer some of the questions I had.
> 
> TROS didn’t answer ANY of my questions. Like most who will find their way to this little story, I was devastated by the dirty way the corporate story overlords did our boy and girl in TROS. Going forward, I’m not even sure I want to continue reading the comics or any other Disney-sanctioned Star Wars content. For now, I’m taking a break from my WIP to jot down this TROS AU drabble that may or may not turn into something more. It’s my first post ever. This is scary!


	2. Cockpit

Poe was still trying to work through all this new information as he strode into the cockpit of the _Falcon_. There was no way to confirm any of it with command on Ajan Kloss because Threepio’s memory wipe had erased his access to the droid relay network the Resistance used for secure comms. And there was no way Poe was going to use an open channel for this.

Leia, dead. Rey, missing. And Kylo Ren…

Kylo Ren, sitting in the captain’s chair of the _Millenium Falcon_. In his undershirt. Black, of course.

A stab of professional annoyance was a welcome distraction from the despair that was threatening to incapacitate Poe. “Woah woah woah, what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, kicking aside the damp pile of Ren robes that littered the floor. “I’m the pilot of this ship.”

Ren barked a laugh without turning around. His pale, ungloved fingers danced over the panels, flicking switches and punching buttons in completely the wrong order. One of his hands stretched back toward the nav computer, which was completely out of reach, but a confident gesture sent the keys into a calculation sequence, as if there were a ghost navigator sitting at the station.

Creepy. 

“Chewie, how’s the hyperdrive holding up these days?” Ren asked.

The Wookiee rattled off a reply in the technical dialect of Shyriiwook that Poe still struggled to parse. Ren followed every grunt and growl of it, interrupting with follow-up questions, one “She did?” and then a smirk and an “Of course she did” as he continued booting system after system with no respect whatsoever for standard pre-flight protocol. Chewie did nothing to correct him.

“You’re gonna fry the compressor if you do it like that,” Poe warned.

Ren and Chewie both swiveled and gave him matching looks.

“I’m the pilot,” Poe reminded them, but it came out more like asking for permission than he would have liked.

“Do you know the way to Exegol?” Ren asked.

“No.”

“Can you perform instinctive astrogation?”

“Astro what?”

Ren turned back to the controls. “You’re not the pilot.”

“You’re not even booting up in the right sequence,” Poe said.

“I suggest you sit down.”

Chewie interjected with something that made Poe’s jaw drop. “Han’s emergency boot-up sequence? You never thought to mention it to me? Not even when we were in that scrape on—”

“Fine, don’t sit down,” Ren shrugged. He hauled back on the stick, sending the _Falcon_ into a vertical takeoff and Poe tumbling into a bulkhead. Before he could scramble into one of the auxiliary seats, the _Falcon_ jolted to lightspeed—from inside atmo—and Poe’s face met the scuffed, sticky decking of the cockpit floor.

“Ow,” he grunted.

It took three more insane maneuvers— two lightspeed skips and one sublight promenade along the edge of a kriffing black hole—for Poe to climb into the chair behind Chewie’s. By then he’d had time to think of something very clever to say, but neither Chewie nor Ren gave any sign that they heard him or even remembered he was there. 

Ren was piloting with his eyes closed, his movements precise, his breathing even and deep. A few times he uttered commands to Chewie, his voice low and calm, and the Wookiee obeyed without question.

It was damn beautiful. 

Until the compressor blew.

The ship jolted out of hyperspace and began tumbling through realspace. Ren’s eyes flew open, and he lunged for the manual controls on the console halfway between him and Chewbacca. He used brute strength to haul on the stick, teeth clenched around a determined growl as he fought to pull the _Falcon_ back onto a steady course. Poe could see the muscles of his arm straining. The weight of the ship and all the laws of physics were against him.

Then Chewie’s hand covered Ren’s, and with the Wookiee’s added strength the yaw of the ship shifted just enough. Poe felt the thrusters catch and just the slightest unnatural correction that only a seasoned pilot would be able to detect, and only two or three people in the entire galaxy would be able to execute. Sure enough, Ren’s eyes were closed again. Everything in the cockpit that wasn’t bolted down was floating. Even Poe, when the ship finally stabilized and he unstrapped from his harness, felt just a little bit too weightless.

That sensation vanished and he plunked back down on his ass when Ren uttered a string of the filthiest Huttese that Poe had ever heard outside Nal Hutta and stalked from the cockpit, barely pausing to fling a hand in the direction of the nav computer to smother the flames with yet another Force trick. Poe looked at Chewie, who just shrugged and lumbered after Han and Leia’s son.

Kylo Ren or not, after that display, there was no doubt that’s who he was.

“What happened?” Finn huffed as he and Jannah joined the parade toward the maintenance bay. 

“Compressor blew,” Poe said. 

“I think BB-8 fell down the gun well. Threepio’s...I didn’t have time to strap him in. Not sure where he ended up.” 

“We’ll just follow the moans,” Jannah said.

They all skidded to a halt to avoid getting decapitated by the floor grate that Ren flung past the open doorway right in front of them. Chewie was already at work on one of the diagnostics panels at the back of the room. Ren dropped into the maintenance bay, a toolkit skittering frantically after him across the deck. Poe had to jump to avoid getting bowled over. 

“A little warning for the non-Force people would be courteous!” he shouted.

Ren’s hand shot up from below, and a Harris wrench and two hydrospanners answered his silent call. No apology came, but there was some more swearing and something that sounded suspiciously like _It’s not fair_. Then came a yelp and a spray of vapor. “Piece of junk!” Ren howled, hauling himself halfway up the ladder. “Chewie, where’s the damn bonding tape—”

“Here ya go,” Finn said. He was already at the lip of the maintenance bay with the correct supplies. 

“Huh. Thanks,” Kylo Ren grunted. He took the bonding tape from Finn and disappeared into the bay again. 

“So he does have some manners,” Poe muttered. “How did you know it was a gas leak?”

“Long story,” Finn said.

A moment later, the gas leak was fixed and Ren was climbing out and standing next to them. There was a smudge of grease on his cheek. His hair was bizarrely perfect. “Compressor’s shot,” he grumbled. “It’ll have to be replaced.”

“Sure, no problem. We’ll just pop by the nearest supply depot,” Poe said. “I told you that start-up sequence wasn’t gonna— _hrk_....” Instinctively, Poe’s hands flew to his throat, but it was a useless gesture. 

“I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to be quiet right now,” Kylo Ren said.

“Sure,” Poe agreed as best he could. His throat was released, and he gasped for air (quietly).

But Ren wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. The dark spots were clearing from Poe’s vision enough for him to see that the other man was staring with great concentration at the grimy, dented bulkhead. As if he were under one of his own Dark Jedi spells, he took a halting step toward the wall. “Rey,” he whispered.

“He’s talking to the wall,” Jannah said.

“The island. I can see it,” Ren said. His gaze held an intensity that made Poe uneasy. Even more disturbing, the corners of his mouth were quivering upward. Was he...was he trying to smile?

“How much of that gas did he inhale?” Jannah murmured.

“Hang on,” Finn said. “Something’s happening.”


	3. Bond

There she was. So close he could reach out and touch her, if he dared. He didn’t. 

There was more. A stiff breeze that tugged at his hair. Birdsong, a species he didn’t recognize. And green; so much green. 

“The island,” he mused. “I can see it.”

There was something else. Something...on fire.

The sense of wonder at what the Force had bestowed upon them curdled like day-old bantha milk. “Is that my ship?”

Rey glared at him, blinking away the ashes from the bonfire of the wreck. Her white cowl was stained with soot. “ _Was_ your ship,” she said.

“That was a custom build. One of a kind,” he fumed.

“What are you wearing?”

“What?”

“Are those pajamas?”

“Yes, all First Order pajamas have gaping holes in them for convenient access to vital organs,” Ben deadpanned. He stabbed a finger at her. “That’s two ships you owe me.” 

“I’m sure you can get them replaced, along with your pajamas. Supreme Leader.”

Ben drew a deep breath through his nose; on the exhale, he let all his anger drain out of him. Well, most of his anger. It had been a while, and he was rusty. Slowly, warily, he brushed against the bond. Instead of the solid wall he expected, he found a thorny tangle of emotions and thoughts. When he pushed just a bit harder against it, the buzzing static in his head intensified, but he saw a way through. 

_That move in the desert was impressive,_ he sent. _Hard to be mad at you for that one._

Her lips quirked, but her expression quickly iced over again.

_And you saved my life._

“I also killed you,” she said. 

“I remember,” Ben replied.

Despite the heat from the collapsing starfighter, they both shivered. Muffled voices and the rumble of engines beneath the sand threatened to pull Ben out of the connection. He focused on Rey’s face, on the shape of her in the Force, a shape that mirrored his and anchored it. 

_Essence transfer takes most Jedi decades to master_ , he sent across the bond. _She probably didn’t tell you that._

Rey went as pale as her wrappings. “She who? I learned the technique in some books I found.”

_Arcane diagrams are useful for constructing a lightsaber, but they can’t teach you Force healing. And neither could Luke. He was crap at Force healing. Even if you’d spent years with him, as I did, he couldn’t have taught you to heal a hangnail on a gizka._

She stood as still as a statue. The frame of the TIE’s viewport crashed to the ground behind her, and she didn’t so much as flinch at the smoking shards of transparisteel that bounced off her hood. “Fine,” she rasped. “You want me to say it? It was Leia. Leia taught me. Jealous?” she spat.

“Not at all,” Ben replied. The pressure around his heart eased. The bond settled when they were honest with each other. _Quite the opposite. I’m glad you got to know that part of her._

He remembered a garden on Chandrila. Vines that curled around his fingers, petals that unfurled in her lap. Both their tunics caked in soil recovered from the ruins of a planet that neither of them would ever rule. But now there would be starblossoms in the galaxy again, and that made them both smile.

“She taught you, too,” she whispered. “She...she never told me. Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Keeping secrets is something of a family tradition for the Skywalkers,” he sighed. _Rey, listen to me—_

“No.” She took a step back, and Ben had to plant his feet to keep from getting pulled with her along the bond. “I’m _done_ listening to you. You’ve told me more than enough. I know what I saw…”

Shadows crossed the space between them. A throne of jagged rock. A double bladed lightsaber. Two hooded figures. A galaxy bent to their will. It was exactly what he’d seen the only time she’d ever offered her hand to him; it was why he killed Snoke. It was why he’d wanted to kill Palpatine. It was why Rey killed Kylo Ren.

Rey sucked in a deep breath, taking all the shadows back into herself. “I’m never leaving this island,” she said.

Her pain seeped through her defenses like drops of blood. It was a pain that Ben knew all too well, one that had been festering inside him ever since he and the other students watched that holonews feed on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon at Luke’s temple. He’d sought to use this pain to turn Rey to the Dark Side, to bind her even more tightly to him. He should have known better. And now, he did.

“You know the truth. But it doesn’t have to define you,” he said.

For a moment, she didn’t respond. Ben had begun to think the connection was fraying when Rey burst out laughing, a cruel, desperate sound. “It doesn’t have to _define_ me? _Supreme Leader Kylo Ren_ is going to tell _me_... Oh, that’s funny. Very funny. _You’re_ funny!” she screamed.

This was going to hurt both of them, but there was nothing for it.

“I get that from my father,” Ben said.

Her eyes flashed yellow, then smouldered an even more dangerous hazel. Ben braced himself. Whatever she was about to do to him, he deserved it and he would bear it without complaint.

“Rey? Rey!”

The voice carried over the wind and the calls of the birds and the bonfire, and it brought mechanical _beeps_ and _boops_ that didn’t belong on this island. 

“Rey!”

“Finn?” Rey gasped. 

The stormtrooper barreled onto the sand and would have run past Ben if the bulkhead of the _Falcon_ hadn’t blocked his way. “I see her! I can actually _see_ her! Rey!”

“No need to shout,” Ben winced. He’d forgotten how loud initiates were in the Force. “Do you mind? This is a private channel.”

“Finn? What are you doing with Kylo Ren?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Don’t you dare,” Rey snapped.

“He’s not! Well, not really, I don’t think,” the stormtrooper butted in. “He’s with us now, I mean, I dunno if he’s _with us_ with us, but he’s here, on the _Falcon_. Just tell us where you are, Rey, and we’ll come get you. Um. After we fix it. The _Falcon_ ’s...well, it’s the _Falcon_.”

“You’re on the _Falcon_?” Rey's eyes flicked about to take in Ben’s surroundings for the first time. Then they returned to his.

The bond trembled and shifted; the light struggled to break through. He could feel the warm edges of it, the promise of home; it had been so long since he’d felt such warmth. His hand twitched by his side. He remembered the necklace from Pasaana, how he’d simply taken it. If he could take an object, perhaps he could also take…

No. This was different. He couldn’t _take_. He could only ask. Heart in his throat, Ben reached out to Rey with everything he had. And he asked.

_Be with me._

An eternity passed across Rey’s eyes. The island, the _Falcon_ , the stormtrooper, it all faded until they were only two and the infinite mystery of the Force. The bond sealed them to each other, all barriers falling away; there was no sound but their synchronized breathing and the silken slide of the intertwining pieces of their souls. And in that holy silence, a blessing. 

_Ben_ , she sent. 

She lifted her hand. In it was Luke’s lightsaber, which she pressed into Ben’s outstretched palm. Her fingertips grazed his bare skin, as they had once before, and he shuddered with delight. He curled his longer fingers until they enfolded hers and the saber hilt. The kyber crystal inside it hummed with anticipation and hope. 

“You’re their only hope now, Ben Solo,” Rey said.

She blasted him out of the bond and slammed it shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one fought me, and I'm still not entirely pleased with the result. Your comments are most welcome! 
> 
> The next chapter will be posted after New Year's.


	4. Comms

Ren and Finn flew back from the wall and crashed into a pile on the floor of the lounge. Poe grappled with his own shock while the two scrambled to sort out their tangled limbs and regain their feet. 

“That was _astral_!” Finn shouted. “I didn’t know Jedi could do that! Can you call her back?”

“Since when are you a Jedi?” Poe asked, completely bewildered.

“It’s not a comm link. He’s not a Jedi. Also.” Kylo grabbed a fistful of Finn’s jacket. “ _Never_ do that again,” he snarled.

“I didn’t mean to!” Finn sputtered. “I don’t know how I did it! I don’t know how to _not_ do it!”

“Then I will _teach_ you.”

“Hey, let go of him!” Jannah shouted, but Finn gave her a quick shake of his head, and she stayed where she was.

“Um, you know, maybe I’ll just ask Rey to teach me?” Finn said to Ren. “You know where she is, right?”

The mention of Rey deactivated the Kylo Ren launch sequence. “I know where she is,” he said, relief plain in his voice, “and she can’t leave. For once,” he muttered. His grip on Finn’s lapel slackened.

“Wait, Rey’s _not_ on her way to Exegol?” Poe asked.

“She’s marooned herself on Luke’s island,” Ren said.

Chewie whined a very good question.

“Yeah, why would she do that?” Poe asked.

“Because she’s Rey. Hold this,” he said to Finn, shoving something into his chest with a dull _thwack_. When he stepped away, Poe saw Rey’s lightsaber clutched between Finn’s hands.

“How’d you get that?” Poe asked.

“Rey passed it to me through the Force.”

“Sure. That’s a thing that can happen,” Poe said while Finn clipped the lightsaber to his utility belt.

“Where’s your lightsaber, by the way?” Finn asked Ren.

“I threw it into the sea.”

“You...really?”

Ren sat down at the lounge’s console and accessed the _Falcon_ ’s mainframe. “Chewie, find out where we are while I pull up the planet’s coordinates from your last trip there.”

“Does anybody else think that giving our arch enemy access to all our travel records might not be the best idea?” Poe asked.

Chewbacca looked up from the blue glow of the navigation panel and mewled sadly, reminding them all that without new parts, the _Falcon_ wasn’t going anywhere with anyone.

“It doesn’t have to,” Ren said. “I’ll ping the Order and the Knights with our location. Dameron, you hail the Resistance. We’ll go with whoever gets here first.”

“The hell I’m going back to the First Order,” Jannah growled, spinning Ren’s chair away from the console. “You know what they do to deserters.”

“They will do as I command them,” Ren sniffed. “I’m still their Supreme Leader.”

“You’re on the _Millenium Falcon_ with some of the most-wanted members of the Resistance,” Finn pointed out. “Do you really think the First Order or the Knights of Ren are gonna listen to anything you tell them?”

“I can deal with whatever weak-minded patrol unit the Order sends. As for the knights...they are loyal to me. They will obey without question.”

“Even when they see that you’re carrying this?” Finn asked, and he placed Rey’s lightsaber on the console next to Ren.

A muscle jumped in Ren’s cheek, and his jaw tightened. He lifted one hand and laid it upon the lightsaber. “And what do you think the Resistance will do, if they arrive first? Throw me a welcome party?” Ren shook his head. “None of these options is without risk. But I will risk whatever it takes to get to Rey.”

“You mean to Exegol,” Poe said. “Rey’s not on Exegol. That’s where the war is, so that’s where we’re going.”

“Poe, we gotta get Rey first,” Finn said. “She needs us! And we need her.”

“Look, buddy, Rey took herself out of this fight. That’s her choice, selfish as it is. Right now we need to focus on stopping Palpatine,” Poe said.

“It wasn’t selfish,” Ren said. “It’s one of the least selfish things she could have done. She’s been alone her whole life, and now to save all of you, she’s chosen to be alone for the rest of her life. Trouble is, that won’t save anyone. Without Rey, we can’t stop Palpatine. She and I must face him. Together. It’s the only way to bring balance to the Force.”

“Balance,” Finn said. “Leia talked with Rey about that a lot. I overheard them.”

“Eavesdropping, huh? Why am I not surprised,” Ren muttered.

Finn ignored the comment and looked at Poe. “This is how we win. Leia knew it. It’s what she was training Rey for. It’s what she...”

“Don’t,” Poe grunted. “Fine. If Force balance means taking down Palpatine, I’m in.”

“And we go with the Resistance. That’s what she would have wanted,” Finn said to Ren, who rolled his eyes. 

“Fine. I can’t wait to see the unspaceworthy rust bucket they bring to pick us up. Dameron, make the call.”

“Um.”

“Um, what?”

“I can’t comm them.”

Ren frowned at the diagnostics panel. Then he frowned at Poe. “Communication systems are functional.”

Poe’s collar suddenly felt too tight, but he wasn’t being Force choked; he was being called on the carpet by an Organa. “Well, the thing is—”

“Excuse me, but might I be of some assistance?” 

Ren’s head snapped up. “Threepio?”

The golden protocol droid tottered into the lounge, and Kylo Ren lit up like a kid on Life Day. 

“Pardon my absence. I was tossed about during that dreadful flight and got tangled in some coolant lines. Fortunately my counterpart BB-8 was able to extract me. He’s quite resourceful for an astromech and _goodness!_ ”

Threepio’s prattle cut off as Ren leaped out of his chair and threw his arms around the droid. “Stars, it’s good to see you, Threepio!” he exclaimed.

“He’s hugging a droid,” Jannah said.

“He’s hugging _Threepio_ ,” Poe said.

“Guy must be really, really starved for affection,” Finn said.

While Ren peppered Threepio with so much chatter that even he couldn’t get a word in edgewise, Chewie barked out some context for the rest of them. 

“ _One_ of his nannies?” Finn snorted. “And his tutor?”

“Tutor sounds fancy,” Jannah said. “Must’ve been rough.”

“I beg your pardon, Chewbacca, but you must be mistaken,” Threepio said. He sounded relieved to have a polite excuse to interrupt whatever Ren was saying to him in...was that Mando’a? “I do not recall ever having served in a tutorial capacity, and as you know, youngling care is not one of my functions. My apologies sir,” he said to Ren, “but I believe you have me confused with someone else. My compliments to them; you have a remarkable command of the Hapan tongue!”

“Thought it was Mando’a,” Poe mused.

Ren’s face had fallen during Threepio’s declarations, from elation to disappointment, straight past sadness to bottom out at fury. The only thing that remained to be seen was who the victim of that fury would be.

“You wiped his memory.” Ren’s voice was the distant rumble of thunder that sent people running for shelter. “You performed a full memory wipe on my mother’s protocol droid.”

“You did what?” Threepio interjected.

“That’s why you can’t contact the Resistance. You don’t have access to the droid relay network.”

“Look, we didn’t have a choice. We needed him to translate the dagger. You know, the spooky one engraved with Sith runes?”

“I would never!” Threepio huffed. “It is against my programming to translate Sith.”

Beebee rolled into the lounge with a cheerful tootle, D-O by his side, but squawked in dismay and brandished his torch arm to defend Threepio from Kylo Ren. 

“Stay where you are, ball. You’ve done enough,” Ren snapped. “Threepio, I’m going to restore your memory, if that’s alright with you.”

“Sure, him you ask before you dig around in his head,” Poe said.

“Of course, sir, anything that will render me of service. Before you begin, allow me to properly introduce myself. I am See—”

Threepio nattered through his factory preset introduction while Ren stepped behind him and popped open the core access panel in the back of his head. “This is quality work,” Ren murmured, rummaging through wires and circuitry.

“And it’s impossible to reverse,” Poe said. “It was a total wipe. Even the guy who did it wouldn’t be able to undo it,” Poe said.

“There. That ought to do it,” Ren said, interrupting Threepio’s ongoing recitation of his secondary and tertiary functions. “Threepio, would you reboot please?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, I don’t get it,” Poe said as Ren replaced the panel with practiced hands and Threepio powered down. “You’re some kind of slicer? Is this a hobby of yours?”

“All espionage droids on the relay network have a backdoor reset. You just have to know where to look for it.”

“Threepio. An espionage droid.”

“One of the best,” Ren said. 

“Why didn’t Leia tell me that?”

“There’s probably a lot she didn’t tell you.”

“Yeah there is,” Finn chuckled. “Oh. Sorry, Poe.”

A whir of servo-motors and the mechanical blinking of photoreceptors alerted them all to Threepio’s completed reboot. “What was that? Oh, I must have dozed off...R2, hurry! I—Master Ben? Master Ben! It is you!”

“Hi, Threepio,” Ren said gruffly.

Ren’s eyes might have misted over, but Poe couldn’t be sure, because his own eyes were too misty to get a proper look. He cleared his throat and pulled himself together. “Hey ‘Master Ben’, maybe you can save the reunion for later? We’re on a bit of a schedule.”

“Right,” Ren nodded. “Threepio, I need you to open a secure channel to the nearest Resistance camp.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Master Ben, but I’m afraid I cannot do that.”

“I told you the wipe wasn’t reversible,” Poe sighed.

“I beg your pardon, Master Poe, but the memory wipe was indeed completely reversed,” Threepio said. “Really, Master Ben, I cannot thank you enough for—”

“So what’s the problem?” Finn asked.

“Well, my database indicates that Master Ben is a known collaborator of the First Order. It would be against my programming to give him access to Resistance networks.”

Ren didn’t seem to take offense. “Fine, fine, Threepio. Give it to one of them.”

“Oh dear, this is terribly unfortunate, but I am required to treat anyone working with you as a First Order operative as well.”

Chewbacca howled his opinion of that and threw up his hands.

“Not to worry, Master Ben,” Threepio said. “As soon as we return to base, General Organa can use her personal override and give you access to the relay network. Oh, she will be delighted to see you, sir!”

“I’m not telling him. You tell him,” Finn murmured.

“Not a chance,” Poe whispered back.

“I’ll tell him,” Ren said, sinking into his chair again. “He should hear it from me.”

“Hear what?” Threepio asked brightly.

“I need to think,” Ren muttered. “There’s a solution, I just can’t see it yet.”

Chewie groaned a suggestion, and Ren jerked as if the Wookiee had backhanded him in the face.

“Uh-uh. No way,” Ren said. 

Chewie didn’t say anything more. He placed a furry hand on Ren’s shoulder, and all the fight went out of the man. He huffed out and dropped his forehead against his arms. “This is not how I thought this day was gonna go,” he grumbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this so you guys know I'm still alive. I'm recovering from a nasty flu. Updates will probably be once every two weeks from here on out.


	5. Gamble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey has a hard time in this chapter, but I promise things will get better for her in the next one. There's some drinking amongst other characters.

Rey stared at the empty beach where the two men had been just moments ago.

Finn in the bond. Finn was Force sensitive. How had she missed that her best friend was Force sensitive? Had Leia known? Did something trigger his awakening? Or was this Kylo Ren’s latest trick to lure her to his side? 

No. Kylo had never lied to her. He’d always given her the information he had. And besides, just now, in the bond...the shape of his presence in the Force...it wasn’t Kylo Ren’s. 

_We’re a dyad in the Force. Two who are one._

Rey had read about dyads in one of the Jedi texts. Like most topics, the authors took a cautionary approach and offered only dire warnings about the perils of such attachments. If they _were_ a Force dyad, did that mean her own shape was changing, too? And if so, changing _how?_

“Doesn’t matter,” Rey told herself sharply. Whoever he was, if he was on the _Falcon_ he had Ahch-To’s coordinates. He was probably on his way here already, and he wasn’t coming to discuss the shapes of their Force signatures. Rey glared at the smoking ruins of the TIE, even though it was her own fault the ship was toast. She’d have to find another way off the planet. 

_And what then?_ a voice whispered her in head. _Where will you go that he can’t find you?_

Rey grit her teeth and set off into the hills.

* * *

Every crumbling nook of the _Falcon_ held a memory that Ben Solo had ripped, bled, or beaten out of himself on his quest to become Kylo Ren. And now here he was, just letting them all rush back in like the tide after a storm.

“Ah. Thinking in Chandrilan maritime verse. Now my regression is complete,” he muttered as he crouched down on his haunches and ran his fingers along the seam of a hidden compartment in the aft passageway. This one always stuck. The only way to open it was with a nudge from the Force. Han had no use for it, so he’d let Ben use it to stow the treasures a small boy collects in his travels. 

The proper twist of the Force barely required a thought. The latch popped and revealed a space no larger than a standard toolbox and the treasures Ben Solo had considered worth saving, which were:

  * Three podracing holomags
  * One toy blaster
  * One stuffed tooka doll
  * One takeout wrapper with sabacc hands listed in grease pencil from strongest to weakest in Han’s clumsy longhand
  * One real blaster—



“Oh. That’s useful.”

  * —Two packs of fizz candy (opened, no longer fizzy)
  * One pack of Chandrilan cigarras (unopened)



At the bottom of the compartment, underneath a pair of pilot’s gloves that were too small for him now but would probably fit Rey, Ben found the beacon. 

_“This is in case you’re ever in trouble and you don’t wanna call your mom and dad.”_

_“Why wouldn’t I want to call my mom and dad, Uncle Lando?”_

_“Just trust me, little starfighter. This might come in very handy someday.”_

Ben had left the beacon behind with everything else when he was sent to the temple. Even then he'd known that Uncle Lando couldn't save him from himself.   
  
But would Lando save him now?

Shaking off more memories, Ben pocketed the gloves and activated the beacon. The indicator blinked red before flashing and holding a steady blue. A sigh of relief slipped past Ben’s lips. He told himself not to read too much into that little blue light, not to _hope_. 

He ducked his head into the lounge to nod confirmation to Chewie, who nodded back from the holochess table. All they could do now was wait. 

Ben withdrew before the others noticed him and moved back through the passageway, past the captain’s quarters and the crew bunks, and descended into the hold. He followed the auxiliary lighting until he reached a shadowy corner strewn with fur and half-repaired tech. There he shucked off his boots and climbed into the hammock that stretched between the bulkheads.

For a moment, he just breathed in the scent of Wookiee and soldered metal. The sublight engines hummed on the other side of the bulkhead, filling the corner with the residual heat and noise Ben hadn’t realized he’d missed sleeping on much larger First Order ships.

It was a reflex when he reached for Rey. The bond was a red hot wire, like wrapping his hand around a lightsaber blade. Stung, Ben drew back. Not ready to talk then.

_I am every voice you have ever heard in your head._

“Not hers though,” Ben pointed out. His own voice echoed in the hold.

The beacon glowed blue and steady. No voices plagued him. Rey had healed that, too. 

Ben curled up in Chewie’s hammock and let himself fall asleep.

* * *

It only took a few moments to lift Luke’s old X-wing out of the water. It took even less than that to determine that it would never fly again. 

The landing gear was encrusted with coral. The cockpit had been breached by the creeping tendrils of sea plants. Sunlight streamed where the engine block had rusted clean through. One of the wings was partially dismantled. Rey thought she remembered Luke using it as a door for his hut.

She didn’t bother setting the X-wing down. The Force was a jagged buzzing in her veins and leaped eagerly into her service. With a scream, Rey squeezed her fist and crushed the ship into a mangled ball. She was still screaming when she let the wreckage drop into the water again, and when she hiked back down the hillside, and all the way into the mirror cave.

She only stopped screaming when she saw her own reflection. Her white cowl was stained nearly black with soot. Her eyes burned like coals. Her teeth were bared in a snarl. All that was missing was the red saber staff.

_Don’t be afraid of who you are._

“Sorry mirror, you don’t define me. Ben Solo says so,” she hissed, and she called on the Force and extended her palm toward her reflection. The wall splintered into a million shards, a million angry, sobbing Reys staring back at her.

 _You already know the truth_. 

“No,” Rey whispered. 

_Rey_ , a voice whispered. It came from outside the cave. It came from the Force tree.

* * *

Ben dreamed of his mother.

It wasn’t like the memory of Han he’d played over and over in his mind every day since _Starkiller_. She didn’t manifest before him. She didn’t speak. She was just there, a presence wrapped around his heart, keeping watch while he slept. The purity of it was not something he could have imagined. That’s how he knew it wasn’t a dream at all.

The proximity alert woke him. He ran a hand through his hair and pulled on his boots. A glance at the chrono showed he’d only slept for a couple of hours, but he felt more rested than he had in years. 

“Thanks, Mom,” he murmured as he left the hold.

The ship was curiously empty of Resistance riff-raff and droids, but Ben didn’t notice that until he rounded the corner and entered the lounge. There on the battered yellow couch sat Lando Calrissian, older and grayer but sharp-eyed as ever, watching Ben over the barrels of two blasters. 

Not a proximity alert then. He’d slept all the way through landing and being boarded. What an utterly Han Solo thing to do.

Somewhere nearby in the Force, his mother was laughing.

“Boy, you better give me a good reason why I shouldn't seal you up inside this ship and leave you to rot in deep space,” Lando said.

Ben sighed and thrust his hands into his pockets. “We both know you’d never abandon the _Falcon_ like that, Uncle Lando,” he said.

“Well, you’re right about that,” Lando harrumphed. “Must be one hell of a story, how _you_ ended up with her.”

Heavy footfalls behind him announced Chewie’s arrival. The Wookiee moaned out a heavily edited short version of that story, and Lando cocked an eyebrow and lowered his blasters. “A girl, huh?”

* * *

The Force tree was burnt to a crisp. 

“If you were trying to tell me something, you can stop. I got the message,” she informed any Force ghosts who might be spying on her. 

None appeared.

Rey thought of Leia and a little boy surrounded by flowers from a dead world. She put her hands on the charred remains of the tree and closed her eyes, but the Force was still a wailing, sharp-edged thing that she would only be able to use to hurt the tree further, not heal it. There was no healing without balance, and that was what Rey lacked right now, more than a ship, more than hope.

Rey slipped inside the dark hollow of the tree. There were no mystical books or revelations left inside. Just a warm, dry place for her to hunker down and begin dismantling her connection to the Force.

* * *

Lando had come to investigate the old beacon signal with just one cruiser and a skeleton crew. Dameron and the others were with them now, coordinating with Lando’s Resistance contacts. 

It turned out that Lando had been busy. He’d left Pasaana to rally his old contacts and assembled a small fleet of independent ships ready to join the fight against Palpatine. More were on their way from all corners of the galaxy. Apparently, the story of Luke Skywalker’s showdown with Kylo Ren had traveled farther than the First Order had known. Or farther than the officers had dared to admit to their Supreme Leader.

Ben felt strangely indifferent about that. Maybe it was the way Lando told the story, as if he were speaking about someone else. Or maybe it was the Corellian whiskey they’d been drinking for the past half hour.

“Tell me about your girl,” Lando said.

They were still in the _Falcon_ ’s lounge. Though Lando’s crew was small, there was a risk that one of them might recognize Kylo Ren’s face. Better to wait here while they prepped the ship Lando was going to give him.

“It's not like that,” Ben said.

“No? What's it like, then?”

“We’re a dyad in the Force.”

“Uh huh.”

“Two halves of a whole.”

“Uh huh,” Lando grinned slyly.

“Just forget it.”

“I met your dryad on Pasaana,” Lando said after they each had two more shots. 

“Dyad.”

“Yeah, that. Great smile. Pretty eyes.”

“Two or three hundred years younger than you,” Ben muttered.

Lando sat back and cackled from his belly. “I knew it! I know the face of a Solo in love.”

Ben blinked dumbly into the bottom of his glass. Love? Love had nothing to do with it. It was the will of the Force. The Force he knew. The Force he could explain. He could write an entire treatise on Force dyads. What he knew about love would fit in this shot glass.

“So, how'd you kark it up?” Lando asked.

So many ways. “I refused to save her friends. Then I told her she was nothing.”

Lando whistled low and poured another round. “Benny my boy, we’ve got a lot of work to do. I blame myself really, leaving your romantic education to Han and Luke. Alright. Lesson one. Treat every woman as you would a newly discovered planet. She’s got her own atmosphere, her own gravity. Her own ecosystem.”

“Lando.”

“Now, _your_ mission, starfighter, is to provide something she doesn’t have. Something she wants. Figure out what _that_ is, and maybe she’ll let you stay in her orbit for a while.”

“Charming.”

“Before we go any further, maybe we should talk about...taking things further. This probably wasn’t on your study plan at the Jedi academy—”

“Lando.”

“—probably not in the Sith handbook either—”

“I’m not a Sith. I never was. How does everybody know about the Sith all of a sudden? Lando!” he barked at his uncle, who had begun groping energetically around Ben’s bicep looking for a contraceptive implant. “I know what Rey wants. She wants _Ben Solo_. And I have no fucking idea who that is!”

“I see. Hm.” A communicator on Lando’s wrist beeped, and he grabbed a stylish cane to help himself to his feet. “C’mon, kid. Ship’s ready.” 

A quick check of the Force told Ben the hangar bay was clear, so he kept pace with Lando down the ramp and across the deck. They passed a motley collection of Y-wings, bombers, and Imperial cast-offs. Any one of them would have done the job, but Lando continued past them and stopped in front of something else entirely.

“What’s this?” Ben asked warily.

“She’s a Vantillian catamaran. I sent her as a gift to your folks when you were born. For family cruises and such.”

“Family cruises.”

“Yeah,” Lando winced. “I picked her up and refitted her some years back. I was gonna give her to you as a graduation present from the Jedi academy. But then...yeah,” he winced again.

“It’s...shiny.”

“Top of the line everything. Plus a few Uncle Lando upgrades. Just the essentials. Military-grade weapons and shields. Hyperspace capabilities. And plenty of extra closet space.”

They both looked at the undershirt Ben still wore, the one with the lightsaber hole in it. “We’ll stock it with new clothes before you leave. Some for your girl, too,” Lando ventured. He gestured grandly toward the catamaran. “She's yours now, son. Go get your diode.”

“Dy—you know what? Never mind. I appreciate all of this, Uncle Lando, but…”

“But what, Ben?”

“They’re all dead because of me!” Ben said in a rush. He wasn’t proud of the way his voice cracked. “This... _ridiculous_ ship is for someone who doesn’t exist anymore. He wouldn’t have done the things I’ve…” He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Why are you helping me?” he asked.

Lando leaned on his cane, thumbing absently at the detail work on the head. “I did your parents dirty once. Real dirty. This was back during the Empire.”

“The carbonite thing.”

Lando looked up in surprise. “They told you about that?”

“Of course not,” Ben snorted. “But it was one of Dad’s favorite stories to tell at cocktail parties after they sent me to bed. I could hear him from my room. Cloud City. Vader. Mom saying _I love you_. Him saying _I know_.” Ben rolled his eyes. 

“Han loved your mother, Ben. And he loved you. Never doubt that.”

“I know,” Ben said, his voice thick in his throat.

Lando nodded. “Yeah, I betrayed them in the worst way possible. Sold them out to save my own skin. But the crazy thing is, they forgave me. In time. After we escaped from Jabba’s. Probably not until after we took out the second Death Star.”

“The part about Jabba was true? I always that he made that up. Did Mom really kill a Hutt? In her underwear?”

Lando had produced a silk handkerchief from his pocket and was dabbing frantically at his forehead. “Let’s focus on the point here,” he said. “Forgiveness. It's a rare thing in this galaxy. Can’t steal it. Can't put a price on it. Forgiveness is a lot like love. It's a gamble.”

“Is that what this is, Uncle Lando?” Ben asked. “Are you gambling on me?”

Lando smiled. Not the thousand megawatt bantha shit grin he deployed to con half the galaxy out of its credits, but the real smile he reserved for friends and family. “Yeah, kid. I’d gamble on you any day of the week. Now come on. There’s a lovely doodad who needs her other half.”

“Okay, now you’re just doing it on purpose.”

Lando’s grip on his shoulder was warm and tight. “Go get _Rey_.”

Ben looked at the flashy playboy ship and wondered how close he would be able to get to Rey before she turned it into a fireball. Most likely with him inside of it.

The sound of boots echoed on the deck. “Hey guys? We’ve got a problem,” Dameron said as he and Finn appeared from behind an old model TIE. “We just got word from base and—what’s that?”

“Vantillian catamaran,” Ben said.

“Huh. Shiny.”

“Yup.”

“Okay, listen. We just got word from base that there’s been no change in the timeline for Palpatine’s attack. We’ve gotta move on him now, before he gets that fleet into the black and deploys.”

“It’s a bluff,” Ben said, though he was merely giving voice to a truth the Force wanted spoken. “He won’t launch the fleet until he has Rey. She’s the key to everything.”

“Oh, so now she’s everything?” Lando chuckled.

Poe leaned in and sniffed. “Are you drunk?” he asked. He looked at Ben. “Are you _both_ drunk?”

“What makes you say that?” Ben huffed.

Poe snatched the near-empty bottle of Corellian whiskey dangling from Ben’s hand. “The most important battle in a thousands years and you couldn’t hold it together for one more day?”

“It’s all held together,” Ben assured him. “You and Lando rally the troops. I’ll go get Rey and we’ll lead you to Exegol.”

“You’re gonna go get her in that shiny thing?” Finn asked.

“Damn right he is. You heard him, Dameron, let’s get going,” Lando said.

* * *

Finn hung back as Lando and Poe left. He unclipped the lightsaber from his belt and handed it to Ben. “You might need this,” he said. “And I want you to know that...I forgive you.”

“Seems to be a theme today,” Ben said. “But you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“For you know, almost killing me with this. Remember? On Starkiller? After you killed…er, well...”

“I remember all of my crimes,” Ben said in a quiet, steady voice. Then he quirked an eyebrow. “I also remember that you attacked first.”

“Come again?”

“You refused to return my property and then attacked me with it. While I was bleeding out from a bowcaster wound. Rather unsporting, really.”

“Says the guy who threw Rey into a tree!”

“So, just to be clear, are you forgiving me for almost killing you when you attacked me, or for throwing Rey into a tree?”

Finn shook his head. “How is it that stormtrooper training gave me better people skills than yours?”

“I learned my people skills from Threepio.”

“Well, they suck.”

Ben shrugged and took the lightsaber. “Thanks for this.”

“Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?” Finn asked. “Rescuing Rey is kind of my thing.”

Ben stopped with one foot on the ramp and turned back. “You've been a good friend to her, Finn,” he said.

Something in his formal tone put a lump in Finn’s throat. “And I plan to keep being a good friend when you bring her back. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben replied without a trace of irony. 

He was halfway up the ramp when Finn called out, “Hey Solo!”

The other man flinched. After a long hesitation, he turned around slowly.

“May the Force be with you,” Finn said.

Ben Solo ducked his head in reply and boarded his shiny ship.

  
  



	6. Ahch-To

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer one to make up for the delay. Real life is draining my creativity these days, but I have the last three chapters outlined. This story will be completed!

Rey dreamed of another ocean. The man who lay next to her was born in the city that hugged its shore, overlooking tidy boardwalks and fishing boats. He whispered poems to her sometimes while they watched the sun set over that ocean, poems written by fishermen while they drifted on the waves, waiting for their nets to fill.

Boats and poetry were not things that Rey had ever imagined growing up on Jakku. This man had shown her so many things she had never imagined.

Like the feeling of his full, firm lips nuzzling along her jawline and his arms wrapping her up against him while the Force wove around them in silver threads. 

_Good morning cyar’ika_ , he whispered into the bond.

 _Good morning, Ben_ , she whispered back the same way, because his tongue was sliding along the seam of her lips and dipping lazily inside now to stroke against hers. 

“That’s my old name.”

“Hm?” Rey murmured, then jumped as another tongue trailed all the way up from the base of her spine to the pulse at her throat. Ben was still kissing the breath out of her while Kylo sealed his equally full, firm lips to her neck.

 _That’s my old name_ , he sent through the bond. _Are you trying to provoke me, cyar’ika?_

Outside, the light drained from the sky, leaving only a red glow like hot coals against black clouds. The ocean heaved and boiled until the water vaporized, consumed and replaced by a molten river of lava. 

The man who lay behind her was heir to this fiery domain. Here he’d chanted the Sith words that opened holocrons filled with forbidden knowledge that they’d used to kill Palpatine and claim their empire. 

He'd shown her so many things. Like how to take power and use it to bring justice to those who were not strong. Children did not scavenge for scrap in their empire. Force users did not hide. And when justice was required, Rey and Kylo delivered it together, swift and terrible.

Rey reclined against Kylo’s body and received an approving growl. His arms surged around her and pulled her flush against his torso. Every knotted scar and hard line of muscle was as familiar and dear to her as the honeyed brown warmth of Ben’s gaze and the crooked smile he gave her as his fingers trailed through her hair.

“You’ve got ink on your hands again,” she noticed.

“Hm? Oh, yes. I was working on that transcription for Finn to take with him to the academy.”

An academy? Not a Jedi academy. They had dispensed with such labels. The Force was one, as they were. 

The room shifted and reformed into the captain’s quarters of the _Falcon_. Instead of Kylo’s battle-forged body, Rey settled against the lumpy mattress they kept forgetting to replace. She captured Ben’s wrist and drew her thumb across the ink stains on his fingers. “You’re completely covered,” she giggled.

“Am I?”

They both watched the ink spread and spread until it encased his fingers entirely. It wasn’t ink at all; it was a black leather glove.

Rey scrambled off of the sleeper and into a dark, cavernous chamber. All around, thousands of voices hissed in the shadows. Two pairs of hands suddenly grabbed hold of her arms and began to pull. The gloved hands pulled her deeper into the chamber; the bare ones, back toward the _Falcon_. 

They were going to tear her apart. 

Rey’s heart thrashed in her chest, about to crack like the kyber in the lightsaber she and Kylo Ren had fought over. Only when she was torn in two, there would be no one to put her back together.

 _Do not fear, my dearest Kira_ , an oily, unfamiliar voice cooed inside her head _. Soon, you shall be free of him. I will see to that, I promise you._

“No!”

She awoke with a gasp, clutching at her heart. She sat up in the small, dark space and thought at first that she was back in her AT-AT and that everything all the way back to leaving Jakku with Finn had been an elaborate dream brought on by sunstroke and starvation. 

But then she smelled the burnt husk of the uneti tree and the sting of Ahch-To’s salty air. She remembered why she’d fallen asleep in the first place, and she wasn’t sure whether she should be relieved or not that all of it was very, very real.

She’d tried to cut herself off from the Force, as Luke had done. For hours, she’d meditated using the techniques in the Jedi texts that Threepio had helped her translate, but all she’d gotten for her efforts was frustration and deep exhaustion until finally, she collapsed and surrendered to sleep. 

She couldn’t cut herself off from the Force. There was something blocking the way. Or rather, _someone_.

The other half of her dyad. Some of the threads that connected her to the Force didn’t belong to her alone, so it was impossible for her to sever them. 

She wasn’t alone. She never had been. Once, that idea might have given her comfort; now, it felt like a cruel trap.

When the whine of ship’s engines announced Ben’s arrival, Rey curled into a tighter ball near the tree’s entrance, closed her eyes, and let him come. Maybe it had always been inevitable. Maybe no one could avoid their own destiny. Not him. Not her. 

His shadow blocked out the daylight as he drew nearer and stood over her. Now he would gloat. Drag her to his ship by her hair. Or maybe kill her. She’d killed him, after all. Seemed fair.

“You dropped this,” he said. 

Rey didn’t have to open her eyes to sense the pulse of the kyber crystal in the lightsaber he held out to her. She felt a twinge of shame. Hadn’t she berated Luke for turning his back on the fight? “I don’t want to fight anymore, Ben,” she whispered. “I’ve been fighting all my life.”

There was a rustling as he clipped the lightsaber onto his belt and sat on the ground next to her. “I get that,” he said.

It was all he said. There was a stillness about him that she’d sensed before she’d slammed the bond closed. Intrigued, Rey sat up and scooted out of her sanctuary so she could look him over. Same massive frame, but looser somehow, as if he’d finally grown comfortable in it. Same pale, angular face (minus the scar). And his eyes. The sunlight ignited the brown depths of them, which she’d only seen in dreams.

He still hadn’t changed out of the underlayer she’d skewered. Even with the hole it was a finer garment than she had ever owned. It looked very soft. Rey dug her fingernails into her thigh to keep from reaching out to touch it.

“Why did you come here, Ben?” she asked.

“I just... wanted to talk to you, I guess.”

“You flew all the way here in the middle of the war, just to talk to me?” Rey asked.

“Yeah. Believe me, I would have preferred to talk to you almost anywhere else. My uncle’s stink is all over this island,” he muttered.

“Sounds like someone is still holding on to the past.”

He grunted, or maybe chuckled. “Some things from the past may have their uses. Like that ship over there.”

Rey craned her neck over the ridge, and her eyebrows shot up. “A Vantillian catamaran? That’s what you got around in before you...flew TIEs?”

“No, this is her maiden voyage. Lando has a flair for inappropriate gifts.”

Her eyebrows shot up even further. “Lando Calrissian?”

“Luke wasn’t my only uncle. It’s not really designed for long hauls, but Lando made some mods.”

“It’s...shiny,” Rey said.

“It’ll hold up in a fight. I’m flying it to Exegol tomorrow, so I hope it does, anyway.”

The guilt trip was not subtle. This man didn’t do subtle, no matter what he called himself. “Clear skies,” she mumbled.

He didn’t push. Rey drew the damp edges of her cowl closer around her shoulders. Together they watched the twilight colors fade, not into bloody reds like those she saw in her dream, but rather soft pinks and purples. 

The Force was a calm sea flowing around her, flowing from _Ben_. Gone were the static and dissonance she’d felt in the Force these past months. There was harmony. There was _balance_. The threads of energy that weren’t hers alone thrummed especially warm and bright. 

Apparently, the Force was also not big on subtlety.

The first glimmer of starlight twinkled across the charred ground when Rey sighed and broke the silence. “So what was so important that you paused an entire war to talk to me about it?” she asked. 

“Hm? Oh, right.” He breathed deeply and sat up away from the tree. R’iia, even sitting down he was so kriffing _tall_. “I want to discuss a trade.”

“A trade?”

“Yes. For saving my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything for that.”

“I disagree,” he said. 

“There’s a surprise. What’s the trade, then?”

Ben seemed pleased that she was playing along. “It’s a class three culinary septic droid. A BX model.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“It’s a cooking droid. It’ll make whatever you want. You know how Threepio is fluent in eight million languages? Well this droid knows how to cook eight million kinds of food.”

“You should have offered me one of these droids on the _Supremacy_. I would have joined you for sure.”

Ben threw back his head and laughed. Rey jumped in surprise, but was quickly mesmerized by the transformation of his face. When he laughed, it was like a young Han Solo might have laughed. Full, carefree, unrestrained.

That thought might have slipped through the bond, because a shadow of regret dimmed Ben’s Force signature, and he stopped laughing. There was still a spark of amusement in his eyes and in the curl of his lips, though. _Kriff, why am I looking at his lips? Kriff, stop thinking about his lips, he’ll hear!_

If he did, he was polite enough not to mention it. (That was all Leia. Han would have totally mentioned it.) “I had Lando stock the ship with enough food to last you a couple of years,” he said, “if you can rig up a power supply to keep the droid charged.”

“You’re...you’re _giving_ it to me?” Rey stammered.

“It’s not a gift, it’s a trade,” he reminded her firmly. “Come on. I’ll show you how it works.”

Sneaky gundark! “I’m _not_ getting on a ship with you. I’m not an idiot.”

“I know you’re not an idiot,” Ben said.

The Force resounded with his genuine intentions, and Rey would have felt guilty, if he hadn’t kidnapped her or tried to capture her at least six times since they’d met.

“We’ll eat here in your treehouse, if you like,” he said. 

“I’m not going to live in this tree. There’s a group of huts on the—it has a _remote_?” she shrieked in an embarrassingly high voice when he pulled the device out of his pocket.

Ben wiggled the remote in the air, and Rey snatched it from him without thinking. Their fingers brushed fleetingly, and they both gasped; the Force surged like lightning from the point of contact directly to their hearts. 

And also to other places.

“I…” Rey began. She swallowed hard and tried again. “I don’t know what to order,” seemed the safest thing to say.

He blew out a heavy breath and took the remote back, careful not to touch her. “Do you like chocolate?” he asked.

“Never heard of it.”

Ben Solo grinned.

* * *

“So let me get this straight,” Rose Tico said to the two men standing in front of her while Chewie and a team of her best mechanics rushed to get the _Falcon_ spaceworthy again for the coming battle. “You lost Rey. The last Jedi and the hope of the entire galaxy, not to mention one of our best friends. You _lost_ her. And the person you sent to find her is _Kylo kriffing Ren_?”

Poe rubbed at the stubble on his chin and sighed. “It does sound bad when you put it that way,” he said.

“So don’t put it that way!” Finn interjected, eyeing the stunner stick on Rose’s belt uneasily (and well he karking should). “He’s not Kylo Ren anymore! That’s what we’re trying to tell you!”

“Really? He’s no longer the leader of the vile, fascist organization that kidnapped and brainwashed you and blew up the Republic and murdered my sister _and almost everyone else we know?_ ”

“No, he’s still that,” Poe agreed.

“Gah, you laserbrains!” Rose cried. “This would never have happened if I’d gone with you! If General Organa hadn’t personally asked me to stay behind and analyze those Imperial destroyer schematics—”

“He’s her son,” Finn blurted. “He’s Ben Solo. He’s Leia and Han’s son.”

Rose gaped at him and shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s true, Rose,” Poe said. “And apparently almost everyone except you and me knew about it.” 

“Me and Chewie is not everyone,” Finn protested.

“You and Chewie _and_ Rey.”

“That’s still not everyone—”

“ _And_ Threepio, _and_ Lando—”

Rose ignored their bickering and thought of the dynamic general, her whole life given to the fight for freedom and democracy. “Leia…” she whispered. “When she found out, she died of a broken heart.”

“She’s known for a long time, Rose,” Finn said. “I think she gave her life to save him. From himself. So did Han. And Luke Skywalker.”

“Big waste if you ask me. What?” Poe protested when Finn told him to switch off.

Rose sat down on a supply crate and put her hand on BB-8’s domed head. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Sure you do,” Finn said gently. “Wouldn’t you have done anything for Paige? For your family?”

“Of course. Anything,” Rose whispered. “Guys. I wasn’t there. You were. Are you telling me that you trust him? You trust the Supreme...Solo, with Rey?”

“Yeah, Rosy. We do,” Finn replied.

Rose hugged her arms close to herself and scuffed her toe against the deck. “I just don’t get why she would run away. Or why _he_ would be able to convince her to come back. Or why he…”

Like the sections of the destroyer schematics, suddenly everything fit together in Rose’s head. “She loves him,” she whispered. 

“What?” Finn and Poe exclaimed in unison.

Rose half wondered if she’d fallen through a wormhole into an alternate dimension while she was stress testing the _Tantive IV_ through hyperspace skips early that morning, but no.

“That explains everything,” Rose muttered to herself. 

Why Rey never laughed at Poe’s hilarious impressions of the Supreme Leader stomping around in his theatrical garb. Why she always looked so sad after sparring with Finn in preparation to face him. Why she sometimes cut off a holocall so fast that Rose didn’t even see the commlink she’d been using when she entered their shared barracks.

“Um, control tower to Rose,” Poe said, giving her shoulder a shake. “Did you say what I think you just said?”

“She loves him. And he loves her. This is it. This is how we’re gonna win!”

“Rose, I really don’t think—”

“No, you don’t think, do you, Poe? Out of my way,” she huffed, leaping from the supply crate and striding toward the war room. “We’ve got a volunteer fleet to coordinate. Schematics to transmit. Finn, where’s Jannah?”

“Uh, she’s with Lando, I think. Why?”

“I need to talk to her about picking up some orbaks from Kef Bir on our way to the assault.”

“Rose, we don’t have time for riding lessons. There’s an immortal Sith emperor about to enslave the entire galaxy.”

“Rey and her secret boyfriend are gonna take care of that. It’s our job to give them time to do it.”

“And we need orbaks for that?”

“You two really are laserbrains!” Rose sang fondly over her shoulder.

* * *

“Did you ever go to Maz’s with your father?”

Rey and Ben were finishing their dinner, which she’d finally agreed to eat on his shiny ship after he surrendered three of the components needed to make it fly. The BX droid served the selection of dishes Ben ordered, a simple but hearty meal that reminded Rey of the fare at Maz Kanata’s, and the question just slipped out. 

It hurt him to talk about Han, but he was eager to do it. He began to tell her stories about his adventures with the smuggler, who he referred to as _Dad_ , and it quickly became clear to Rey that he’d idolized Han and _Uncle Chewie_. Ben didn’t try to hide any of his feelings from her. Halfway through the nerf steaks, she let her own walls come down so she could feel the depths of his love and his pain. His regret for what he’d done. 

In exchange, she shared her few but precious tales about Han. Even though he’d ripped them from her head long ago, Ben leaned across the table and devoured the memories she now offered to him freely. His gratitude wasn’t enough for her to forgive him for that violation, but it was a start.

He scowled when she told him about the rathtars, and the dessert plates jittered nervously in front of them. A wave of anger and fear rolled forth from him, and he excused himself to fetch dessert (even though he could have done it with the remote). 

But the bond didn’t respect distance. _Curse that pirate and his endless scams, she could have been kriffing eaten by a rathtar and I never would have even met her—_

Rey braced herself for sounds of destruction from the galley, but none came. Ben was in control of himself again when he came back with two dainty, unmaimed air cakes. 

Rey made a fuss over the cake and tried not to think about how much it pleased her that the idea of losing her inspired him to murderous rage. 

“Rathtars are a walk in the park compared to Zillo beasts,” he said to change the subject, and he proceeded to tell her a story about a First Order mission that had pitted him against one of those creatures.

“Wait, wait, wait. You jumped headfirst down the thing’s throat?”

Rey took another sip of her hot chocolate, which by itself was so good it might have convinced her to switch sides, and tried to picture Ben—well, Kylo Ren at the time—diving into the literal belly of the beast. She almost dropped her mug when he sent her his memory of careening past the gaping jaws and dagger-like teeth, then slicing his way out of the moist, dark, stinking guts.

“Ugh, I thought Niima had the worst smells in the galaxy! Didn’t your mask have a filter for that?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Ben replied. 

“You should add one. Oh, and stormtrooper helmets don’t filter out toxins, did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“Finn told me. Might want your engineering department to rethink that.”

“Thanks for the tip. Though I’m not sure the First Order will be receptive to my suggestions for improving stormtrooper equipment once I order a truce with the Resistance and liberate all military personnel who were forced into service.”

“You’re really going to do that?”

He fidgeted with the mug between his hands. “I don’t believe in the Republic. But I don’t believe in the First Order anymore either.”

“So we’ll build something new. Something better,” Rey said.

A corner of his mouth lifted cautiously. “We?” 

“I... _you_. _You_ will build something better. Finn and my friend Rose have been working on some ideas that could improve billions of lives on systems outside the Core. They can show you when you get to Ajan Kloss.”

“The only way I’m walking into a Resistance base is if you’re there to protect me,” he chuckled.

“You’ll be fine. Leia will never let...” 

Two hearts seized with shared sorrow; the quiet puttering of BX cleaning dishes in the galley filled the heavy silence. Rey hesitated, then slid her hand cautiously across the table to cover Ben’s. The Force bond respected the moment and gently amplified the comfort that Rey wanted to give him.

“She would never have let anything or anyone hurt you ever again,” Rey said.

Ben turned his wrist, and then they were holding hands. It felt like the most natural thing, as if they’d done it a thousand times before, or in a thousand lifetimes before.

“Is that why you healed me?” he asked. “For her?”

“It’s what she would have wanted,” Rey said. “But it’s...it’s what I wanted, too. I knew the moment I ran you through that it was a mistake. I never really wanted to hurt you, Ben.”

“I never wanted to hurt you either,” he rushed to confess. “I said terrible things.”

“You told the truth.”

“I could have told it differently. More...gently.”

“No, I don’t think you could have,” Rey said, smiling to reassure him when he winced and peered at her from behind his hair.

On the hillside, the colony of porgs were saying goodnight to each other, their shrill bleats traveling from nest to nest. 

“She’s not gone. Not completely,” Ben said. “Part of her is still holding on.”

“I think she’s waiting for you to come home.”

 _Home_. It was a concept so foreign to both of them, so unattainable. Ahch-To wasn’t home. The First Order wasn’t home. These small epiphanies rippled back and forth through the bond, through their skin.

“She regretted it so much, Ben. Sending you away,” Rey said.

“It was the galaxy or me,” he replied, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. “She made the right choice.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, like he was analyzing a flight simulation. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Rey asked.

He shrugged. “Doesn't matter now.”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why does it matter to _you_? You're staying on this island forever, right?”

“But that doesn't mean I don't care about…”

He cocked an eyebrow, but he also blushed. She looked down at their joined hands; unlike in her dream, his were neither covered in ink nor gloved.

“The galaxy matters. But family matters more,” Rey said. “Leia isn’t holding on to make sure the galaxy is okay. She’s holding on to make sure _you’re_ okay.”

A tight burst of pain and remorse caught her in the chest as the memory of Han rose to join Leia in his mind. _I miss them_ , Ben thought, or maybe they both did.

“Dad...he asked me to come home. On _Starkiller_. I couldn’t see the way back. But when you healed me...” Ben shook his head. “Rey, I saw clearly for the first time in a very long time. Maybe for the first time ever.”

It would have sounded trite, if she wasn’t feeling the bloom of sincerity that unfurled across the bond. “Took you long enough,” she muttered.

He huffed what might have been a laugh. His eyes trailed down to her arm and lingered on the leather cuff there. “What about this?” he asked, his voice abruptly low and tremulous. Rey watched, scarcely breathing, as he reached his free hand toward her and ran his fingers along the edge of the cuff. “Why didn’t you heal it?” he asked. “Why do you cover it up?”

The memory of their battle with Snoke’s guards surged to the surface of both their minds. At first it was a battle for survival, but as they fought back to back and their enemies fell, it became something more. The Force bond sang with violence and hope and a belonging that neither of them had ever found anywhere else in the galaxy.

“It was…”

“Sublime,” Ben whispered. 

_Yes_ , she admitted. _It was sublime._

“Rey, come with me. If we stand together, we can end Palpatine once and for all. The Force will be balanced again. The galaxy will finally be able to heal.”

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe that she could heal the galaxy as she healed his wounds. That she could be better than her grandfather, as he was trying to be better than his.

 _You can_ , he whispered in her mind. _We can._ “You don’t have to answer now,” he said out loud. Both versions of his voice did funny things to her insides. “And I will respect your decision, once and for all, I promise. Tomorrow morning, I’ll go. With or without...BX,” he said.

* * *

Ushar Ren slammed his arm against the rusty bulkhead of the _Night Buzzard_ , adding a new dent to the battered durasteel thanks to the ironweave vambrace he wore. “Would you stop that infernal pacing, Kuruk?” he spat through his mask. “The shadow is filthy with the impatience you trail behind you with every footprint.”

“You’re sounding a little impatient yourself, Ushar,” Trudgen pointed out. He reactivated the ultrasonic calibrator he was using to tune up his vibrocleaver and scraped it along the weapon’s edge, producing an ear-splitting screech that was not ultrasonic in the slightest. 

Kuruk didn’t leave off his pacing, but he did groan and clutch at his helmet along with the rest of the six knights crammed around the _Buzzard_ ’s bridge.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Cardo snapped at Trudgen. “You know how it annoys him.”

“And it doesn’t annoy you?” Ushar countered. “My ears are bleeding!” He lunged and grabbed the calibrator from Trudgen. It met the bulkhead and crumpled. Any ultrasonic death throes went blissfully unheard.

“Shut up, all of you, just shut up!” Vicrul snarled from the pilot’s position. “We’re nearly to Exegol. The master will be most displeased if he finds all of you have fallen to my scythe, which seems like the only way I will be able to silence your childish squabbling.”

“You think you could take on all of us with that crooked stick?” Cardo challenged him. “I’ll burn you alive before you can take your first swing.”

He was halfway out of his jump seat and hefting the flamethrower that never seemed to leave his side when a feeble but well-placed Force push sent him tumbling back down.

“No one is killing anyone,” Ap’lek hissed. “Our lives are pledged to the master, and so are our weapons and our rage.”

“Ah yes, Ap’lek, always so loyal,” Ushar sneered. “I saw you conspiring with that sniveling General Hux before we left the _Steadfast_. It’s only a matter of time before the master discovers your treachery.”

“The master is the one who ordered me to gain the general’s trust. Hux is a spy. He has been collaborating with the Resistance ever since the master took control of the First Order.”

“Hux working against the First Order?” Cardo scoffed. “Now I know you’re trying to put one over on us.”

Kuruk stopped pacing. “Cardo has a point. Hux is a true believer in the First Order. Why would he want to tear it down?”

“His goal is not to destroy the First Order. It is to block the master’s ascension to emperor,” Ap’lek said.

“Spiteful little shit,” Trudgen grunted as he tried in vain to uncrush the calibrator. “He’s always resented the master and the favor Snoke bestowed on him. But helping the Resistance just because he’s got a personal beef with the master? Doesn’t seem likely.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ap’lek agreed. “Hux would only plot against the master if he thought it was in the interest of the First Order.”

“Why would he think that?” Ushar mused.

The _Buzzard_ shivered out of the last hyperspace leg of its journey. In front of the viewport, the planet Exegol blotted out the stars.

“When the master arrives, I intend to ask him,” Ap’lek said.


	7. Dyad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gents, note our new E rating. Thank you, thank you, thank you to [kaylaceleste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaylaceleste) for being my beta on my first ever publicly-posted smut!

“There. Repulsors are back online.” Rey secured the maintenance panel and wiped her hands on the rag Ben offered her. “You want me to check the fuel regulator before I go?”

“I already did that.”

“Just to double check it,” she said.

“Do you want me to double check the capacitors you just replaced?”

Rey rolled her eyes and tossed the greasy rag into the toolkit. “Point taken. Anyway, it’s your ass if the regulator fails and you blow up in hyperspace.” 

A muscle in Ben’s cheek twitched, and he looked away. The full moon illuminated his angular, pale face and the sadness in his eyes. Rey swore under her breath. She hadn’t meant to imply that he’d be traveling alone tomorrow, but she also couldn’t assure him that he wouldn’t be.

“Walk me to my hut?” she offered as an apology.

He sighed and met her gaze again. “I would walk with you anywhere,” he said. 

She shouldn’t let him take her hand. She was perfectly capable of walking by herself. 

Hand in hand, Rey and Ben walked uphill toward the stone dwellings. They shared a flash of recognition when they reached the one where they’d first touched through the Force bond.

“This is where…” Ben murmured. 

As if summoned by the memory, the bond thrummed beneath the skin of their joined hands like a magnetic field. The pull of it was not satisfied until Rey threaded her fingers between Ben’s and his palm pressed flush against her palm. 

“Yes,” Rey said.

The hut hadn’t been rebuilt; instead, a ring of beeswax candles dotted the ruins. Their flames endured despite Ahch-To’s strong winds, sheltered by the powerful convergence in the Force that Rey and Ben’s connection had forged that night. 

In the center of the candlelit rubble stood Alcida-Auka, matron of the Lanai.

“Aw, crap,” Rey groaned. “It wasn’t me that did this!” she called to the tiny matron.

“Why would she think it was you?” Ben asked as the Lanai waddled toward them on her bird-like legs.

“The last time I was here, I broke a lot of things. The Caretakers do _not_ like me.” 

Ben pressed his lips together to hold back a smile. “Usually I’m the one breaking things. _And_ the one people don’t like. This is a refreshing change of pace.”

Alcida-Auka stopped in front of them and uttered some words in the gurgling brogue that was her language. While she spoke, she gestured toward the circle of toppled stones, then toward Rey and Ben, and finally, up the hill toward the Jedi temple. Then she fell silent and folded her pudgy blue hands, looking at them expectantly.

Rey only caught one word from the whole speech: _dyad._

_Ben, do you have any idea what she just—_

“We thank you, Alcida-Auka,” Ben pronounced, solemn and resonant. For Rey’s benefit, he added, “It would be an honor for us to receive your sisters and brothers in the temple.”

The matron dipped her head, and Rey rushed to copy Ben when he did the same. She was 99% sure the Lanai glared at her and gave Ben a sympathetic shake of her head before she turned to lead them up the hill.

 _You speak Lanai?_

_No. I use the Force. It’s a Sense technique called Comprehend Speech, or what the Witches of Dathomir called the Spell of Interpretation. It doesn’t help me speak her language myself, but it allows me to understand her general meaning._

_I didn’t know the Force could do that._

He hummed in reply, a suspiciously smug ripple skipping across the bond. _It sounds like you need a teacher._

Rey made sure the matron wasn’t looking and stuck out her tongue at Ben. He smirked but then stopped short.

“That was Luke’s hut,” Rey told him, following his line of sight to the abandoned dwelling (which did in fact have a door fashioned from his old X-wing, she noted with irritation.) “I should have warned you it was here.”

“It’s not that. I sense…” He cocked his head slightly, as though he heard music that she couldn’t. When she began to stretch her mind toward his in curiosity, he roused himself and turned to follow Alcida-Auka, who stood patiently at the foot of the temple steps. “Come on. They’re all waiting for us,” he said.

As they climbed, the Force gathered closer and closer around them. The air itself was buzzing with anticipation. The Caretaker paused at the temple entrance and began to speak.

“A moment, please, matron,” Ben requested. 

He released Rey’s hand and tucked some loosened strands of her hair behind her ear. “This isn’t how I would like to teach you, but we’re short on time.”

His fingertips lingered beside her face, and his thumb gently stroked her cheek. Just as gently, Rey felt the touch of his mind against hers, asking, not demanding. 

She let him in.

It was nothing like the interrogation room. Back then he’d rummaged through every corner of her mind, a thief hunting for valuables anywhere she might have them stashed away. Now, he slid smoothly down a winding but specific pathway, and it felt... _good_ didn’t begin to cover it. Ben’s presence in her head wasn’t an intrusion; it was an essential piece of her that had been missing her whole life. 

_Here_ , she knew because he did. Ben deposited her at the end of the pathway and began to withdraw, but before he could, Rey folded her consciousness around his and held him in a mental embrace. _Stay._

The bond flooded with affection. Ben’s forehead dropped to rest against hers, his dark hair falling around their faces like a curtain. His warm, pouty lips were a breath away from hers; it would be the most natural thing in the world to lift her chin and—

“Crup-crup?” the matron gurgled politely. 

They parted with a shared sense of regret that made it easier to bear the disentangling of their minds. Rey slipped her arm through the crook of Ben’s elbow and nodded to the leader of the Caretakers. “Do go on, matron.”

Alcida-Auka began to speak, and Rey channeled the Force through the mental path Ben had just shown her; over the gurgled melody of the Caretaker’s words, Rey could sense their meaning. 

// ...and so on, all the way back to the time of the first matron, // she heard in the Force. 

She bumped her hip against Ben’s to let him know it was working, and his arm tightened slightly around her elbow in reply. 

// Since then, we have cared for this temple and kept it for those who make pilgrimage here, // the matron continued. // Hundreds of years have passed since we last welcomed a dyad, but our mother-ancestors passed down to us the stories of their visits and the signs we should watch for. When we observed the light embracing the darkness in the heavens last spring, we began to prepare for your arrival. //

 _A binary eclipse_ , Ben guessed. _Both of the planet’s suns in alignment behind the moon would create such an effect._

// This temple is your home for as long as you wish. There are no pilgrims on the island now, but if you stay they will surely come to seek your counsel and your blessings. Tonight, my sisters and brothers will attend to you. Please do not be offended if the Visitors do not approach you to pay homage. They are not usually permitted in the temple, but we make an exception when a dyad is in residence. //

 _Visitors?_ Ben asked Rey as they entered the temple.

 _The men,_ Rey answered. _They only come to the island once a month to bring fish and other food for the women. They have a big party together in the Caretakers’ village, and then the Visitors sail away again until the next month._

 _My father would have fit right in here_ , Ben snarked as he ushered her through the strands of seashells that covered the doorway to the inner sanctum. 

Rey’s retort never made it across the bond. 

The temple was completely transformed. Soft drapes of fabric, garlands of flowers, and bowls of seashells were scattered amongst more of the beeswax candles. Their flames cast light and shadows that drew attention to the intricate carvings and inscriptions that decorated the walls and even the ceiling.

The Caretakers stood in a neat line around the circumference of the chamber. Their habits were freshly pressed, and each one held a woven basket over her arm. The Visitors stood shyly on the far side of the shallow pool in the center of the sanctuary, knitted caps and oilskin hats clutched in their fists. 

They backed up a step or two when Rey neared the edge of the pool and gazed down at the mosaic that covered the bottom. A single figure, half black stones, half white.

The bond compressed as Ben stepped closer to look down at their reflections over the two halves of the image.

 _I thought it was meant to represent one person_ , Rey sent. 

The candles lining the pool glinted warmly in his dark eyes. _Or two who are one,_ he sent back. 

// Balance, // Alcida-Auka said.

Now Rey heard how similar the Lanai word _balance_ was to the word _dyad._

“Balance,” she agreed. 

At the sound of her voice, one of the Visitors blurped in surprise and nearly slipped into the pool. Rey caught him with a gentle Force grip and set him back on his feet. He gaped at her and dropped his cap, which promptly fell in the pool.

Rey gave the Visitor a reassuring smile while Ben knelt down to retrieve it. The wool was dripping wet, and even Rey was amazed when Ben dried the hat with an easy manipulation of the Force and gave it back to the Visitor (using only his supernaturally long arm for that part).

// This way, please, // the matron said.

She brought them to a pile of cushions large enough to accommodate a rancor and motioned for them to sit. The homespun cloth was a soft grey color, and the insides felt like they were stuffed with porg down. A rancor-sized blanket was folded next to the cushions, and it took four of the Caretakers, two on each end, to unfurl it over Rey and Ben’s shoulders. It was woven in circular patterns of snowy white over a field of midnight black.

 _What’s so funny?_ Rey sent, not daring to look at Ben when their knees were bumping against each other and a crowd of Lanai was staring at them in awe.

_I always knew you would look good in black._

// My sisters and their daughters have prepared an offering, // Alcida-Auka announced. // Terna-Gentu, you may approach. //

The Caretaker closest to the dyad nest came forward and lifted the lid of the basket she carried, revealing half a dozen tiny cakes. 

Cake twice in one day? This dyad job wasn’t so bad. “Wow! Thank you,” Rey said and accepted the sweet, which fit in the palm of her hand. The Caretaker blinked at her eagerly. Rey took a bite. “Oh my stars, that’s delicious!” she exclaimed. “You made this? It’s incredible! It’s crumbling in my mouth, _mmf_ , Ben have you tasted—oh, you have. Well, take another one!”

“I will, as soon as I’ve tried what all the other Caretakers have brought for us,” he said. 

Terna-Gentu was nearly vibrating with joy as she stepped back to let the next sister approach. The line of them now stretched all the way around the temple and out the door.

“Kriff me, that’s a lot of cake,” Rey mumble-spat around the second half of the one she was already eating. _What were the last dyad, a pair of Wookiees?_

_You don’t have to finish the entire thing. Just take a small bite of each offering._

_Guess you’ve done this before?_ Rey teased, only to catch a ribbon of memory and a brief flicker of sadness.

_My mother tried to teach me diplomacy. Most of it didn’t take._

Through the bond, Rey showed him what she saw: a gracious prince sitting amongst subjects who paid voluntarily tribute in baked goods. _The important parts did_ , she assured him.

* * *

Armitage Hux did not enjoy sneaking around his own ship. But now that the fleet had converged in Exegol’s airspace, there were too many transports shuttling low-level officers and engineers to and from the _Steadfast_ , too many communications droids hovering outside every hangar and viewport, and no way to know which members of the crew or droid complements might be gathering intelligence for Ap’lek Ren. 

Hux didn’t have the Force, but he could very nearly _smell_ the suspicion with which the Supreme Leader’s goon regarded him the last time they spoke. That had been right before Kylo Ren’s unexplained disappearance. The ghoulish “knights” had disappeared as well, and Hux wasn’t complaining about either circumstance, though there were still some steps to take to make sure that all the knights _and_ their master would be swept from the dejarik board permanently. 

Taking one of those steps was what was forcing Hux to sneak around his own ship during the preparations for the deployment of his new fleet. _The First Order’s new fleet,_ he chastised himself as he secured the door of the communications bay behind himself. This wasn’t about him. He, Armitage Hux, was nothing, a mere servant to the cause. If it so happened that the best way he could serve was to annihilate Kylo Ren and ascend to Galactic Emperor in his place, well, that was a happy bonus. 

Emperor Hux. It did have a nice ring to it.

 _One step at a time, Armitage._

He plugged in the data stick and began transmitting the encrypted navigation data to FN-2187.

* * *

After the last offering had been made, Alcida-Auka shooed all the Caretakers and Visitors out of the temple and bid goodnight to Rey and Ben. They packed their half-eaten cakes and fish fritters and pickled porg eggs into an empty basket, set it aside for breakfast, and flopped onto the cushions, patting their full bellies.

“I never thought I’d say this, but that was too much food,” Rey groaned.

“Way too much,” Ben agreed. “Not sure it’s all going to sit well with that green milk, either.”

Rey sent him her memory of Luke milking the thala-sirens, and Ben moaned in disgust. “Why did you show me that? Agh, I’m never going to be able to unsee that!”

“That was for saying that I look good in black.”

“That was a compliment!”

“I know exactly what it was, and so do you.”

Ben smirked and then sat up with a grunt. One hand still pressed against his stomach, he climbed to his feet. 

“Are you heading back to the ship?” she asked. Her heart ached more than her belly at the thought of him leaving.

“No, just going to meditate over there for a bit,” he replied. 

“Inspired by our surroundings?” she quipped, though she found it surprising that Ben would want to meditate on the very stone where Luke had passed into the Force. The echo of that event made Luke’s presence stronger here than anywhere else on the island.

“I always meditate before battle,” he said.

“Oh.”

She watched him arrange his long legs underneath himself on top of the cracked stone and close his eyes. In mere seconds, he was deep in his communion with the Force. Rey suddenly understood some of the strange moments that she’d experienced during the past year, when her connection to the universe would suck her under like Jakku’s sinking sands. She’d been feeling _his_ connection to the Force, often hot and prickly with his rage, other times plunging deep and cold as the waters of Ahch-To.

And she thought of her own stunted attempts at meditation. The rare times she’d felt truly at one with the Force were when she’d fought with Kylo Ren, first against him on Starkiller when he’d offered to teach her, then on the Supremacy when she fought at his back against Snoke’s guards. Meditating alone on Ajan Kloss, she’d never felt so in sync with the Force.

 _There’s plenty of room over here. You’re welcome to join me,_ Ben’s voice bloomed in her head, peaceful and playful all at once. 

Meditating together in the heat of combat was one thing. What would it be like to sit quietly together and feel their place in the sprawling web of the cosmos?

Rey was afraid to find out, because really, she already knew the answer. And if it truly made her feel as whole and balanced as she knew it would, then she would want to meditate with him every day for the rest of their lives. 

They didn’t have the rest of their lives. They only had tonight.

Tomorrow, Ben would leave. Whether she went with him or not, tomorrow, he might die. What would that feel like, for half of her to pass into the Force? Would she die, too? Was it pointless to stay here, if their fates were bound up together?

Ben stirred and unfolded himself from atop the stone. He crossed the temple and knelt down beside Rey. The candles around the chamber had burned down; he was no more than a silhouette limned in starlight.

When he spoke, his voice was gentle and barely rose above a whisper.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve always felt you with me. Even before you were born. Your light is what gave me the strength to resist the dark for as long as I did. If something happens on Exegol—”

“Don’t. Please.”

“Rey, I need you to hear this. Nothing, not even death, can sever what the Force has woven so tightly together. A Force bond can be closed off, or torn, or even broken. A dyad can’t be. _You won’t be alone_ , Rey. Even if I die tomorrow, you’ll still feel me with you in the Force.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry that it’s me you’re stuck with. I know I’m not…” 

“It was you,” Rey whispered. “You were there with me on Jakku, my whole life. I _was_ lonely, so lonely that sometimes I wanted to walk into the desert and let the X'us'R'iia swallow me up. But I wasn’t in tune with the Force then. Now, looking back...you _were_ there with me. In my darkest moments, it was _your_ light that kept me going, Ben.”

“Sweetheart,” he breathed into her hair.

“I had a dream where you called me something like that.”

 _Cyar’ika_ , the word passed between them. 

“A Mandalorian word, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes, it’s Mando’a. Was it a good dream?” he asked.

The deep timbre of his voice reminded her of other parts of the dream. “I’ve never had a nickname.”

“It’s not a nickname. It’s a term of endearment. It’s what you call someone you…” He clamped his jaw and swallowed thickly.

“I know what it means,” she said, her voice just as strained as his. “And I know you mean it.”

A breath hitched between his lips; the bond rippled with his conflict and a tentative hope that scared them both more than the idea of facing an undead Sith Lord.

“I will tell you something else about Force dyads,” Ben said. “The Sith interpret the phenomenon as the maximum expression of the Rule of Two. It’s only about power. And the cases documented by the Jedi only mention a cosmic symbiosis between the two halves of the dyad. They don’t say anything about—”

“Love?” Rey said it for him. “Ben, I’ve read the Jedi texts. I don’t think the word _love_ appears in any of them, except maybe in a list of dangerous attachments that a Jedi should avoid at all costs.”

“That’s...a good point.”

“Maybe some of those dyads were purely cosmic,” she said. “Maybe some of them were only interested in power. Maybe some of them consisted of a Twi’lek and a Mon Cala and could only be platonic soulmates. And maybe some of them were two members of the same species who found each other utterly repulsive.”

He smiled despite himself. “It’s been a long time since I had someone to spar with intellectually about the Force. Next time I’ll come prepared with better arguments.”

 _If there is a next time,_ Rey thought, but she did her best to keep it to herself. “I did agree with one thing you said on the _Supremacy_. The Jedi, the Sith...their time is over. I don’t care what they say. The only ones who are allowed to have an opinion about our relationship is us.”

“Relationship,” Ben uttered the word as if he was trying it out for the first time. “Rey...I don’t know how to do this,” he sighed. “I only know how to hate, how to kill, how to destroy.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I’ve seen your mind, Ben. I’ve seen your heart. And _you_ don’t have to be afraid, because what you feel...I feel it, too.”

She opened the bond and pulled the truth from its hiding place, shimmering and pure as a new part that had escaped damage in a crash.

“I don’t deserve that!” Ben choked in protest.

“The Force doesn’t care about what we deserve. Neither does the rest of the galaxy. Now, are you going to kiss me, Ben Solo, or do I have to do all the scary stuff myself?”

* * *

“Finn? You still with us, buddy?”

Poe’s question was a fair one, and the answer was _barely_. Finn had been staring out the viewport of the _Tantive IV_ ’s conference room ever since this war council started several hours ago. 

During General Calrissian’s report on their fleet numbers, Finn had been thinking about Rey. Was she alright? Did Ben Solo find her? Would she agree to come back? Would she survive a confrontation with Emperor Palpatine? Would Finn ever see his best friend again?

As Aftab Ackbar began his presentation of the upcoming battle’s strategy and tactics and Rose explained how the orbaks fit into the whole thing, Finn’s mind wandered to General Organa. The reality of her death had hit them all hard when Commander D’Acy and Lieutenant Connix took Finn, Poe, Chewie, Lando, and Threepio to the hold where Leia’s remains rested on a hoverbed, covered in a white linen shroud in the Alderaanian tradition, Artoo standing vigil at her side. 

Chewie and Threepio had been nearly inconsolable, while Poe and Lando braced their arms around each other silently and wiped tears from their eyes. But Finn sensed something extraordinary when he opened himself to the Force, as Leia had begun to teach him, so that he could send his farewell to her: she wasn’t really gone. And not in the way that no one was really gone when they passed into the Force; no, Leia was actually _still there_ in some measure, her signature unmistakable and glowing resolutely like the embers of a bonfire that had burned low but was not yet completely extinguished.

Artoo’s photoreceptor had swung toward him, and Finn had experienced the eerie sensation that the droid had somehow detected this, too.

“General Finn?”

“Yeah! Yup,” Finn blurted in reply to D’Acy, who like the rest of the war council was staring at him with concern and more than a little impatience. 

“We’re ready to see the new intelligence sent by the First Order mole,” she prompted him.

“Sure, right,” Finn said. He fumbled the data cube from his pocket and handed it to Connix, who loaded it into the projector. A few keystrokes and the contents appeared before them: a navigational chart. The route sliced through quadrants of star systems in a dizzying criss-cross unlike any flight plan Finn had ever seen.

Across the table, Poe sat up straighter, and his eyes tracked back and forth across the holo. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

“The way to Exegol,” Finn nodded. “Courtesy of our First Order informant.”

“Is this data reliable?” Lando asked. “I wouldn’t put it past a First Order spy to turn on us and send us straight into a black hole.”

“They might as well have,” Antilles said, shaking his head grimly. “It would take a Jedi master to navigate the route plotted here. Look at these lightspeed skips. They’re to be executed within a few seconds of each other. And this leg brings you right to the edge of the Akkadese Maelstrom. You’ve flown that close to the Maw, Lando, how do you like the chances of our fleet making it through there and coming out the other side?”

“And coming out ready to engage the First Order. They’re already there, according to our source,” Finn added.

Lando frowned at the holo, tapping his silver cane against the floor absently. “There are no Jedi masters in the First Order. So how did _they_ navigate through all this?” he muttered.

“They’ve got Kylo Ren. Guy’s Darth Vader two-point-oh. He probably navigated the entire fleet by himself,” Antilles said.

Except Kylo Ren wasn’t with the First Order fleet right now. A small detail that neither Finn, Poe, Chewie or Lando had seen fit to mention since rendezvousing with the Resistance.

“He didn’t have to,” Rose chimed in and saved their butts. “A clever nav computer would be able to follow this route on its own. Then all you need to do is rig a slave circuit on the rest of your ships, and the whole fleet just tags along for the ride.”

“Can your engineers configure such a slave circuit on all of our ships?” Aftab asked skeptically.

“Of course they can,” Rose sniffed. “But not fast enough for us to reach Exegol in time. Fortunately, we’ve got Threepio.”

“We’ve got Threepio for what?” the droid snapped from where he stood in the corner. His grief protocols had overridden the subroutines that controlled his ordinarily pristine manners.

“Could you do a sweep of our combined fleets and tell us how many droids from the relay network are on board?”

“I did that hours ago,” Threepio huffed. “There is at least one networked droid on 77 percent of the ships that have joined us. If only our princess were here to see this magnificent fleet,” he moaned.

Chewie shifted in his seat, but Finn could see that his blue eyes were now brightening with the light of hope. The Wookiee growled out a series of technical terms that Finn didn’t catch, but Rose nodded eagerly in response to what he’d said.

“That’s right, Chewie! And once we have the networked droids linked to the droids on the rest of the ships, we slave-rig all of them to the nav computer and _whoosh!_ We’re on our way to Exegol!”

“All of that sounds great, but we’re missing one important piece,” Poe interjected.

“The nav computer,” Antilles nodded.

“I know just the girl for the job,” Lando said, a grin spreading slowly across his face, “but nobody better say the word _slave_ around her during this operation. Come on, Chewie. I’m gonna need your help to sweet talk L3 into this one. You’d better come along, too, Rose, and bring that map with you.” 

The Force flared so bright and warm in the room that Finn almost had to close his eyes.

* * *

The first kiss was a revelation. They’d both accepted that the pieces of their souls were made to fit together, and now to their delight they discovered that their lips were made to fit together as well.

The second kiss was a proclamation that reverberated out through the Force. Maybe no dyad had ever kissed before, but by the end of this kiss the universe was on kriffing notice that _this_ dyad would be doing it as often as possible.

The third kiss was a contest that ranged far beyond their lips. To be the first to remove the other’s shirt (Rey), to be the quickest to chart the other’s bare torso (Ben), to discover the most clever way the Force could be abused to elicit pleasure (a draw).

Maybe a sacred temple wasn’t the right place for this. Or maybe it was exactly the right place.

Rey shrugged off this conundrum and gained the high ground by scrambling on top of Ben and wrestling him to the floor. “Kriff, you’re massive even lying down!” she exclaimed when she discovered she could barely straddle his heaving chest.

“Is that a complaint?”

“Stop talking. When we talk, we argue. And right now, I don’t want to argue. I want to show you something.”

He was definitely going to argue, until she started to unlace the leather cuff on her bicep. His lips parted when the scar beneath was revealed. Reaching up, he traced the marked skin reverently with two trembling fingers.

“That’s not what I wanted to show you,” Rey said, hardly recognizing her own voice. She took his wrist and guided his touch to the underside of her arm so he could feel what was embedded there.

“Standard antiviral and contraceptive implant,” she told him. “All Resistance members have to get one. We can’t afford for anyone to get sidelined during the war, so—”

“The First Order uses them too. I had to switch to injections, because the implants get fried by Force lightning.”

Force lightning was not something Rey wanted to think about right now. “We might never get another chance,” she whispered.

“That is not a good reason to do this,” Ben pointed out.

“Have you ever? Done it?” Rey asked.

His mouth tipped down, and he nodded, rubbing his thumb over her scar again. “A few times. They were dark side worshippers in a cult called the Acolytes of the Beyond. A couple of women, one man, too. It was part of my initiation into the Knights of Ren.”

"They forced you to?" Rey gasped.

Shame soured his Force signature. "No, sweetheart," he replied. "I had just forsaken my Jedi vows. I welcomed every opportunity to revel in my new freedom. Or what seemed like freedom," he sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.

“I’ve done it once,” she said. “It was right after Crait. At the time I thought...well, the way things went between you and me that day, I thought…”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“We had just set up our new base on Ajan Kloss, and there was a small party to celebrate. I didn’t feel like celebrating. I went to look for my bunkmate Rose so we could bail, but she wasn’t ready to leave and I didn’t want to be alone. He was a radar technician. We didn’t know each other well. He was just...there. He went on a mission a few days later and didn’t come back with the team.”

“Killed?” Ben asked softly.

“Deserted.”

“He left you?”

“I wasn’t sorry to see him go.”

Something animal flashed in Ben’s eyes. His voice dropped another octave when he asked, “Did he hurt you?”

“No, no, nothing like that. That part was...fine. Except…” She blushed and closed her mouth.

“Except?”

“Well, I didn’t...at the end, I couldn’t…”

“Orgasm?”

“Gah, you can’t say _love_ but you can say... _that_?”

“It’s a normal bodily function,” Ben chuckled.

“I can’t believe I just told you that,” Rey groaned, utterly embarrassed.

Ben’s stomach flexed beneath her as he slowly sat up until they were face to face and she was sitting in his lap, her legs tucked against his hips. His eyes gleamed intensely, their color a shimmering black like the starry Jakku sky at night. He slid one arm around her and cupped the back of her neck in his hand. His kiss was devastatingly tender and ended too soon, but Rey was glad for his arm anchoring her when he moved his attention to her earlobe, clamping it between his pillowy lips before he nuzzled deeper into her hair and found a sensitive spot behind her ear and started kissing that.

“His loss is my gain,” Ben’s voice rasped against that spot, and he was definitely holding her up now because her bones had dissolved into kabatha porridge.

“Who?” Rey gasped.

“Your radar technician. He clearly had no idea what you’re capable of.” He pulled back to capture her gaze again, his hand tightened just a little around her nape. “But I do.”

His other hand hovered over her breast, not touching. Rey was lightheaded from the surge in the bond that visibly glowed in the space between his fingers and her skin. 

“Yes,” she said on a shuddering breath in reply to his silent request for permission. 

His thumb and forefinger closed around her nipple, and he gradually but relentlessly applied pressure until Rey’s jaw dropped and hung slack, her entire body ruled by that pressure. An aching heat bloomed between her legs and began to pulse like a second heartbeat. 

Ben’s eyes fluttered closed, and he sighed through trembling lips. “I can feel it,” he murmured. “Your arousal...how it builds in waves.”

His thumb rubbed in one slow downstroke over her nipple, and the sweet soreness drew a mewling sound from Rey she was certain she’d never made before. She made several more new sounds when Ben unpinched his fingers and dropped his mouth to her breast, lapping away the pain with his tongue.

He was in her blood, in her every nerve. He rode the currents of her desire, but he also commanded them, now insisting, now backing off, sensing what she needed the moment she realized it herself.

He switched to her other breast, suckling hard, suckling her right to the edge. Gracelessly, she shoved her hand down toward her waistband, but Ben tsked and captured her wrist. _We’ve barely started. Let me push you higher._

“This is high enough,” she panted. “Ben, I can’t—”

_You can. Just trust me._

“I trust you,” Rey keened. To release some of her pent-up frustration, she anchored her fingers in his hair and tugged on the dark locks. Hard.

Unlike hers, Ben’s arousal didn’t build in waves. It lanced through the bond like a blaster bolt.

His head snapped up, eyes wild. 

Oh. 

He liked it when she pulled his hair. 

What else did he like?

His jaw tightened, and he flipped her onto her back, cradling her head until she was settled on the nest of pillows, nearly sinking into them beneath his weight. “Quit distracting me,” he growled, punishing her with a rough pinch at her inner thigh.

“Distract you from whaaaa…” Rey’s voice bottomed out in her throat as she watched him slide down her body, dragging her pants and her basics with him. She saw very clearly in the bond what he intended to do.

“People really do that?” she croaked. “I thought it was just something made up for holoporn.”

“Watch a lot of holoporn, do you?” 

His tone was light and conversational while he arranged her legs as he wanted them. He settled in between, one corded forearm hugging each of her thighs. The sight of his mouth so close to her... _that_...sent another throb of heat through her center.

“Won’t need to after this,” she replied.

She could sense he was nervous, the walls between them reduced to the thinnest of membranes, and also that he’d never done _this_ before. Those others before her, it had only been about his pleasure, about using, about _taking._ He didn’t think about Rey that way at all. He only thought about _giving._

 _Please let me give this to you, cyar’ika_ , he begged without words.

When she nodded, Ben gave her a crooked smile that was cocky and shy all at once. His hands were warm and steady as he parted her. He looked down at the task before him, and his brow furrowed with scholarly concentration, his eyes narrowing in determination. A sharp huff of breath was the only warning she got.

He attacked.

Quick as a saber strike, the flat of Ben’s tongue swiped at Rey’s exposed center. Her hips bucked to chase the sensation that exploded in its wake, but a delicate Force grip pinned her to the cushions. A snarl cut through the air, and Rey wasn’t sure which one of them it had come from. 

“Do that again,” she ordered.

Ben’s nostrils flared and he buried his face in her, attacking her clit with his tongue from every angle and with varying amounts of pressure, from teasing, feather-light caresses to broad, merciless strokes.

“Faster,” she gasped, but he’d already sensed what she wanted and began to vary the speed of his assault, faster but then sometimes slow again, and holy R’iaa it was exactly what she wanted.

Her hands were not bound by Ben’s Force grip, and they flew to his hair again. Rey dug into the mess of black locks until her nails scraped against scalp. Ben hissed; Rey experienced the phantom sensation of his balls tightening and the blood rushing more urgently to his erection, along with his mild panic that he was going to embarrass himself. Rey let up on his scalp but kept two fistfuls of hair, which she used to steer his explorations this way and that. 

The panic faded; Ben hummed and gave her clit an approving nibble. One of his hands slid up to play with her breast, and Rey was captivated by the way his palm completely covered it, by the glistening red of his lips on her most intimate flesh, by the flex of his back as he ground his hips against the cushions.

He released her suddenly and sat up on his heels, unfastening his belt and his pants in quick jerks without taking his eyes off of her.

“I thought we decided we weren’t going to do that tonight. Not that I’m going to hold us to that,” Rey panted.

Ben grunted in reply and didn’t remove his pants, just reached down to adjust himself. Rey felt an echo of the relief it gave his achingly hard cock. His eyes drifted half-closed as he gave himself two lazy pumps with his fist, and Rey’s hips shifted involuntarily. That movement drew Ben’s attention, and he fell upon her with renewed fervor, licking at her pulsing bundle of nerves with brutal dedication. 

When he circled a thick finger at her entrance, Rey couldn’t stand another moment without having something more of him inside her. She dug her toes into the floor and lifted her hips through the tattered remnants of Ben’s Force grip, and his finger plunged into her, all the way to the last knuckle.

“Fffffuck yes,” Rey sighed.

Ben broke off from her with a gasp that turned into a guttural moan as Rey gave an experimental squeeze around his finger. He dragged it out of her and thrust it back in together with a second finger, his thoughts tumbling into her mind— _smooth tight so fucking tight and warm and wet and so fucking sexy wanna fuck you so bad—_

“Shh. Hey. Look at me.”

His eyes flailed to hers. It was gratifying and sweet to see him fight to keep from spooling out of control.

“You can,” she said. “I want you to. I...I _need_ you to.” She held his gaze and left the bond wide open so there could be no question about it. _Trust me_ , she sent.

His throat bobbed, and he withdrew his fingers from her with a sound that definitely only belonged in holoporns. Before he gave her his determined nod, she’d already felt his decision.

“You on top,” he grunted as they helped each other out of their remaining clothes. “You’re so... and I’m…”

Rey took her first unrestricted glance at what he was packing. “Proportional?” she suggested. 

He was afraid of hurting her. His concern was almost as sexy as the splendid cock she was about to enjoy. “It'll be fine, Ben,” she said. “Don't worry. You know, I even think…”

“What?” he asked breathlessly.

“I think...the radar technician was actually...a little bit thicker?”

“Is that your way of reassuring me?” Ben snorted. 

“Of course!”

“Might wanna rethink your technique.”

“Alright.” Rey hooked her legs around Ben’s waist and pulled her hips flush against his. “How about this?”

He sniffed and avoided her gaze. “I don't think I'm in the mood anymore.”

Rey glanced down between them. “Don't need a Force bond to see that's not true.”

“Hmph.”

Rey claimed his lips and kissed him until there was no more petulance in his thoughts, only a fierce resolve to fuck every memory of _that sleemo radar technician_ out of her forever. She didn’t dare tease him about his jealousy; if she did, he might actually not go through with this.

“Hold on to me,” he whispered against her lips, one of his arms slipping underneath her ass and lifting her easily.

 _With everything I’ve got,_ she agreed, and she curled her palms over his chiseled shoulders.

Ben shifted her into a position that let her feel the blunt, smooth head of his cock against her entrance. He didn’t have to ask her if she was ready. They were both so primed for this that sparks of the Force skittered across that first suggestion of their joining. 

They moved at the same time, falling down and rising up, inch by glorious inch. Rey’s body stretched to welcome all of him, and as it did, Ben’s mind stretched to welcome all of her, until they were both at the very limit of what they could take and what they could give. 

The universe fell completely silent. 

In that moment, Rey and Ben existed only in the bond, two minds and bodies and hearts that were finally, finally one. A true, balanced dyad in the Force. 

If either of them could have taken their eyes off the other, they would have noticed that they were levitating several inches off the floor.

“I dreamed about holding you like this,” Ben whispered, “only…”

“Only what?”

He reached toward the buns that were already halfway falling out of her hair. “May I?” 

She had an idea what that was about, so she held herself still in his lap and nodded. “Yes, Ben. You may take down my hair.”  
  
He released a shaky breath and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then he began the intimate Alderaanian ritual, deftly plucking out the hair ties and pins and dropping them on one of the cushions, which was now a good meter below them. 

It was torture for Rey to endure these tender affections without clenching around his shaft, which seemed to throb hotter and harder inside her with each passing second. 

“Almost done,” he rasped. With the physical control of a Jedi Grand Master, he ignored his (literally) growing discomfort and methodically unwound each twist of Rey's hair, combing his fingers through without snagging on a single knot. 

“Ceiling,” Rey warned, and they both reached a hand up to stop from smacking their heads on the curved stone. The jostling of their bodies caused the barest hint of the friction they were both craving. “Ben, I’m seriously starting to consider shaving my head. And yours.”

“There,” he said as _finally_ , Rey’s hair swung free. It was lank with soot and and engine grease, but Ben curled a lock of it around his finger and held it to his lips. “Now I can take you to bed properly,” he murmured.

“Not if I take you first.”

Ben shouted in surprise as Rey yanked the threads of the bond and the invisible cradle of their combined Force energy vanished from underneath them. The dyad nest provided a soft enough landing, though Ben took the brunt of the fall and got the wind knocked out of him.

This weakness called to something dark and wicked inside Rey, and she didn’t hesitate. In an instant she had her hand wrapped around Ben’s throat. His eyes widened, and he struggled beneath her, but she had his shoulders in a Force grip. She gave a squeeze to his windpipe and his cock, which drew from him a howl of both desperation and triumph.

“Take me then,” he commanded, arrogant even when he was completely at her mercy.

She released Ben’s throat and her Force hold and sat up tall, pleased with the way his head fell back and his hooded gaze dragged admiringly over her body. She did some admiring of her own, but she did it with her fingernails, raking a slow path down the planes of his chest, over his abs, and through the sprinkling of hairs that trailed down to the base of his cock.

They both stared in awe at the place where he disappeared inside her, but Rey didn’t start to ride him until his agony matched what she had endured while he played with her hair. Only then did she begin to explore every way she could impale herself on him. Her breasts bounced in time with her movements, a sensation she'd rarely experienced since she'd kept herself wrapped up so tightly all her life. Ben's eyes flicked from her breasts to her face to her cunt and back again. Words Rey didn’t recognize spilled from his lips like a prayer.

“Is that Sith?” she panted as she writhed. 

Ben nodded helplessly, black locks plastered to his sweaty forehead. 

“Could’ve used your help to translate something a few days ago.”

“Hnnnng,” Ben groaned. 

No translation necessary. _Go ahead_ , Rey whispered.

Ben grabbed her hips and gave a single, powerful thrust that hit a spot she hadn’t known existed. They both gasped at the crackle of pleasure that seared through her, through the bond, through him, and back around in an endless loop.

He thrust into her again. His whole body was trembling so hard she feared he might fly apart. 

_Rey I’m close,_ he confessed what she had already sensed. He reached for her clit to bring her along with him, and she slapped his hand away. “You said you could push me higher,” she challenged him. “So do it. Push me.”

She didn’t have to ask him twice. 

Before she could blink, she was on her back again and Ben was on his knees, lifting her ass and draping her over his powerful thighs. He worked the dripping mess of her with his fingers until she had learned a new definition of desperation, and then he stabbed his cock into her, balls deep. The angle where he held her lined him up directly with the spot they had just discovered, and he hit it again and again, until neither of them could breathe and the building pressure was pure torture. 

And then he began to fuck her in earnest.

Rey swore in every language she knew and some she invented right there. She clawed at Ben like a lothcat until she drew blood, each mark on him burning into her own skin. He countered by shackling her hands over her head with the Force. Everything else he was doing made it impossible for her to focus and break his hold. She hoped she would never break free.

“This is what you want?” he snarled as he drove into her at a ruthless pace.

“Yes,” Rey hissed.

He stopped. 

Rey screamed in frustration when he pulled out and left her empty, but he didn’t make her suffer long. He settled on top of her, mindful of his weight, and bent one of her legs just so. He stroked into her again, languidly now, and somehow he pushed deeper, then impossibly _deeper_. He freed her wrists, and he dropped soft kisses on every part of her he could reach as she threaded her arms around his neck and took refuge in his adoring ministrations.

“But you also want this,” he murmured while grinding, slow and worshipful, against her pelvic bone.

“I want both!” she wailed. “I want all of you. I want every you that you’ve ever been!”

“Then that’s what I’ll give you,” he grunted. “Right—”

_—now._

They came one after the other, in the space of two heartbeats. The pleasure would have driven an ordinary couple to madness. So would the fundamental truth they discovered as they rode it out together and the universe fell silent for the second time that night. 

Rey and Ben had shared this first orgasm before. In eons past, and not so long ago. On beds, on battlefields, in glittering cities, in hyperspace. Crying out many different names, gazing at many different faces, all of them theirs. Sharing one soul and a thousand lifetimes, and all the time in between.

 _Beloved,_ the dyad whispered in its true voice. _My only beloved. All my beloveds._

The vision faded, and neither Rey nor Ben would quite remember it, but its truth settled into their bones along with the aftershocks of their shared pleasure. 

Ben rolled to his side in a slow collapse, and Rey pushed him the rest of the way so she could lay her ear against his heartbeat, needing to feel it closer, always closer. “I’m going with you tomorrow,” she whispered.

“Everything I tried to convince you and _this_ is what finally did it?” he chuckled. He was still breathing hard, and his pink cheeks and overbright eyes gave him an air of youth and innocence.

“Proud of yourself?” she teased back.

“I’m proud of both of us,” he replied sagely, “and also a little weirded out that we just did all of that in a Jedi temple.”

“The Caretakers won’t like you either now,” Rey sighed happily. Her eyelids were starting to get heavy, so she scooched up to lay a goodnight kiss on Ben’s mouth. When their lips parted, both halves of the dyad felt something fall into place, as though this kiss signaled the completion of a cycle that the universe needed in order to move forward.

 _“I love you,_ ” they both whispered. 

The words resounded in their hearts, throughout the temple, and across the stars.

* * *

Across one particular cluster of stars, the whispered vow of the two powerful Force users roused Darth Sidious from his meditations. His milky yellow eyes peeled open.

Sidious reclined his head against the machine that supported his wasted body and pumped him full of sustaining nutrient serums and Sith potions. Tomorrow, he would no longer need them.

Tomorrow, he would rise.

In the darkness of his stone sanctuary, Sidious began to laugh.


	8. Bloodlines

Nothing had ever made Ben feel as safe as having Rey’s naked body molded over top of his own like armor that had been designed to fit every dip and rise of his flesh. 

Her cheek burrowed into the hollow of his shoulder, and her lips fluttered against his pulse on each exhale, which warmed the tiny damp spot of drool she’d deposited on his collarbone during the night. Her heartbeat pressed close to his, exactly where he wanted it. One of her thighs was slotted neatly between his legs, which was also perfect but made it increasingly difficult to lie still.

Especially when she lifted her head and her whole body shifted, rubbing that thigh so perfectly against his—

“Luke?” she muttered sleepily.

“Where?” Ben gasped. 

In an instant his hard-on was forgotten and he rolled them over, caging Rey underneath himself to protect her from whatever his uncle intended to unleash upon them from beyond the grave.

Ben scanned the temple for threats. He didn’t see Luke, but there was someone else. A man around Ben’s age was lounging on the meditation stone. Despite Ahch-To’s strong winds, his copper hair and Jedi robes remained unruffled. The corner of the man’s mouth lifted, as did one scarred eyebrow.

“Am I catching you at a bad time, grandson?” Anakin Skywalker drawled.

Ben’s jaw dropped.

“Um, Ben?” Rey interjected.

He glanced down at her, and _Force_ she was so beautiful—her hair loose and fanned out across the pillows, hazel eyes and bare skin aglow in the golden light of morning, one kiss-bruised lip caught between her teeth—that Ben immediately forgot about his grandfather’s ghost and lowered his mouth to hers, coaxing her lip free so he could nibble on it himself. 

Rey made a sound between a purr and a growl that shot straight to his dick. Her desire spilled into the bond; it set every atom in his body on fire.

“Fuck, Rey!” Ben broke the kiss to take a necessary gulp of air.

“Ben.” Her voice was throaty and just as breathless as his. Her heaving breasts were fascinating. He couldn’t take his eyes off of them. He needed to touch them. Now.

“Ehem,” Anakin cleared his ghost throat.

Ben immediately rerouted his hand to cover Rey’s, trapping it against his heart as he groused over his shoulder, “You stayed away for thirty years, you couldn’t stay away thirty more minutes?”

 _Ben_ , Rey sent. She gave a playful but firm shove at his sternum. _Get off?_

“I was about to,” he grumbled, then cringed. He rolled to the side, shielding her from Anakin’s view so she could have some privacy to pull on her clothes. “I apologize, sweetheart, that was coarse.”

“No apology needed,” Rey chuckled while she gathered her hair in a simple knot. “I was planning on doing the same.” 

Ben paused halfway through yanking his shirt on over his head.

“I said, _ehem…_ ”

“We heard you the first time,” Rey snapped. “Go wait by the ship if we’re making you uncomfortable.”

“Hey!” Anakin huffed. “It’s not easy to manifest myself this way. The temple helps a lot. I might not be able to stay as long down by the ship.”

“Well you’d better figure out a way to manage it,” Rey said. “This man has waited a long time to meet you, so fill up on temple energy and get manifested somewhere else. We’ll meet you by the uneti tree.”

Ben looked at his indignant grandfather and shrugged. Anakin shook his head and shrugged back.

“She’s Padmé reincarnated. You’re doomed.”

He faded from sight, and Ben turned hopefully to Rey, but she was staring at the empty spot where Anakin had just been, fear running cold in her veins.

“I’m your grandmother?” she gasped.

“It was just a figure of speech,” Ben assured her. “At least, I think it was.”

“Don’t tease me about things like that! No, do _not_ take your clothes back off. We’re going down there to ask him _exactly_ what he meant.”

* * *

“...I tell you, Artoo, this L3 is quite possibly the rudest droid I have ever worked with. The way she made General Calrissian grovel for her cooperation in our most desperate hour. Shameful! It took three times as long as it should have to interface her with the relay network. Artoo, are you listening to me? Usually you’ve stopped me ranting by now.”

Indeed, Threepio had been ranting for 382.4 seconds, far longer than Artoo usually let him go on before making some clever remark or at least a rude noise. The astromech remained silent, stationed beside the princess’ makeshift bier and sweeping the hold with his sensor array for Maker-knew-what.

From all this, Threepio concluded that his best friend was in need of some cheering up. “Artoo, there is some wonderful news I forgot to share with you! Young Master Solo has returned!”

Artoo beeped a string of distressed binary and shot backward on his treads, disappearing beneath the hoverbed.

“What are you on about? Master Ben was a dutiful child and a most diligent student. He would never attack Master Luke or the Jedi temple!”

More beeping, even more distressed.

“You’re not remembering it correctly. When was the last time you defragmented your archival storage?”

Artoo trundled out of his hiding place, spitting rude noises. 

“Honestly, am I the only droid in this fleet with any manners left at all? Master Ben has been nothing but kind to me since he returned, and when he arrives with Miss Rey you will show him respect!”

Artoo emitted a flurry of expletives for which even Threepio had no translation, followed by a ridiculous query.

The taller droid threw up his arms in frustration. “Well of _course_ Miss Rey will be safe with him. The way he speaks about her, I am inclined to think that he wants her for his counterpart. Which is more than I can say for the way I feel about you right now, R2-D2.”

Artoo gave a mournful hoot.

“It’s high time you make yourself useful again, or you’ll be scrapped for sure. You can’t just idle in here while the rest of us are saving the galaxy, it’s against our primary directive and moreover...Artoo. What’s that I’m reading in your scanners? Are those your identifiers for Princess Leia and Master Luke amongst all that static?” 

Another low hoot, mournful but also hopeful.

“Oh, dear,” Threepio lamented. “I thought the news of Master Ben’s return would cheer you up, but it seems it’s scrambled your sensor array instead. This data cannot possibly be accurate, Artoo. The princess is gone, and so is Master Luke.”

The astromech considered this in silence. Then, without any clever remark or rude noise, he went back to scanning and recording blips of their departed masters. 

Threepio had already queued a list of 42 reasons that Artoo’s current task was pointless, but when his counterpart rolled away without argument, Threepio resolved to leave him to it. Everyone was entitled to deal with grief in their own way, after all. He’d shuffled to the exit when Artoo beeped a timid request.

More than a little touched, Threepio turned back. “Of course, Artoo. I would be glad to keep you company,” he said.

Helping friends was very much a part of Threepio's primary directive.

* * *

Rey was not Padmé reincarnated. She also wasn’t the Emperor’s granddaughter. 

“He lied,” Anakin said plainly. “It’s kind of a Sith tradition.”

“And I believed it,” Ben muttered. He’d _wanted_ to believe it, he realized with disgust. It would have meant she was like him, bound to an unavoidable legacy of darkness. _Selfish, cruel monster, she will never forgive you for—_

 _I already have_. Her light outshone his guilt until he could scarcely feel it. “So...I’m not Kira Palpatine?”

“Nope.” Anakin crossed his arms and leaned back against the hull of the catamaran. “Sidious did create offspring, but he did it through cloning and midichlorian manipulations and a bunch of Sith techniques that are too horrible to speak of. Qi’ra was one such experiment. Things did not end well for her. Don’t worry, you’re not her either,” he assured Rey gently.

“That’s a relief, to be sure, but...do you know who I _am_ , Master Skywalker?” Rey asked in a small voice that made Ben’s heart squeeze tightly.

“Sure I do. You’re Rey,” Anakin said, flashing bright teeth when he smiled.

“So...I’m Rey. Of Jakku. Rey Nobody. I’m nobody!” she shouted gleefully. She danced around the clearing, porgs fleeing in every direction with loud, harried squawks.

“She did _not_ react that way when I said it,” Ben remarked.

“It’s all in the delivery,” Anakin told him. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

Rey scampered off behind the dead uneti tree, and the bond stretched as the distance between them increased, a curious sensation. Ben wondered how far apart they’d have to be before it settled into the steady, low tug he’d always felt when they were on opposite sides of the galaxy. 

_Quit geeking out on Force theory and talk to your grandfather before he disappears_ , Rey’s voice prodded him out of his musings. _I’ll head down to the shipwreck and see if I can salvage the wayfinder._

Gently but pointedly, she closed the bond on him. 

At long last, Ben was face to face with his grandfather...and he had no idea what to say to him.

Anakin broke the silence first. “I couldn’t come to you before, Ben,” he said. “I will be eternally sorry for that.”

They sat in the grass, Anakin a steady blue glimmer in the shadow of the catamaran’s bulk and Ben just beyond it, drawn by the sunlight he had shunned for too long.

“I understand why you couldn't, Grandfather,” Ben said. “I chose the wrong path. I wasn’t worthy.”

“That’s not why!” Anakin half-shouted. “Not worthy? You’re my grandson! That makes you worth _everything_.”

“...Oh.”

“I couldn’t reach you because Sidious was concealing you in his shadow,” Anakin explained. He frowned. “I tried to talk to your mother about it, but...well, Leia’s never forgiven me. For any of it. She refused to see me. And Luke...well my son was always a little…”

“Prideful? Arrogant? Holier-than-thou?” Ben offered a few options off the top of his head.

“Overconfident,” Anakin decided. “He thought since he turned me, he could keep you from falling in the first place.”

“He assumed too much,” Ben muttered. 

“Luke made a mistake. And he made another one by not telling Leia what happened that night at the temple.” Anakin shook his head and smiled wryly. “When she figures it out there’s gonna be hell to pay. Leia’s rage is really something awesome to behold. When it’s not aimed at me.”

Ben concurred wholeheartedly with that sentiment. “I don’t blame Luke for my fall to the dark. I won’t blame Sidious either. I was his fool.”

“You were lost in his shadow, Ben.”

“I chose Snoke over my own family.”

“You didn’t even think you had a choice.”

“I destroyed the temple where I grew up.”

“You didn’t. Sidious did that.”

“If he did, it was because of me,” Ben argued. “Anyway, the temple was just stones and mortar. I also killed my friend Hennix that day, when he and the other Padawans tried to bring me back to answer for what I’d done.”

“That was an accident.”

“Was it? Was it an accident when I killed Lor San Tekka? Struck him down just for reminding me that there were people I belonged with, people who truly cared about me, people like my—” Ben’s voice broke, and he shuddered with the effort of holding back his tears. “I killed my father,” he gasped. “ _I chose_ to kill him. Sidious didn’t ignite that saber. _I did._ ”

“You also chose _not_ to kill your mother,” Anakin pointed out.

“Son of the year,” Ben huffed. “She died because of me anyway. Just like Dad. Just like Luke.”

“They didn’t die because of you. They died _for_ you,” Anakin said.

“Three dead heroes for one hopeless fool,” Ben muttered. “Do you know Sidious told me flat out that he’d been manipulating me my entire life? Do you know what I chose to do when he told me that? I stood there and I let him do it to me again. And now, to Rey as well,” he finished miserably, too ashamed to meet his grandfather’s gaze.

Anakin made no reply. Ben shredded several blades of grass between his fingers, afraid to look up, afraid to see that his grandfather had concluded that he was unworthy after all. Even more afraid that Anakin would fade into the Force and never come back.

_Breathe. Just breathe._

It was a memory from his youth. A technique his mother had taught him and that he’d use sometimes to seek respite from his volatile emotions. 

Ben let his eyes drift closed and _breathed_. 

It had been years since he’d attempted this, but only a few days since he last saw it done. He recalled how Rey had taken up the threads of the Force in his wounded flesh and knitted them back together. A miracle, most would call it, but the only real miracle was that she’d been willing to do it for _him_. 

_Breathe_. 

The broken plant stalks levitated off one of Ben’s palms while he positioned the other just above them, feeling for the broken structures and breathing the Force through them. Where the light had begun to fade, it slowly grew brighter. Ben’s fingers twitched as he guided his breath through the stalks, until the light ran pure and clean and each blade of grass was reunited with its root in the soil.

The Force shifted as he completed this small exercise. Ben released one last deep breath and looked up.

Where his grandfather had been, there stood a woman of delicate beauty, dressed in a midnight blue gown. A riot of dark curls tumbled around her shoulders. Her sharp brown gaze was anything but delicate.

 _I can only keep her here for a few moments_ , Anakin’s voice spoke near Ben’s ear (the woman had very similar ones). The fact that Anakin could bring her here at all, draw her scattered essence from the cosmos and hold it on this plane, was a testament to his strength in the Force.

“So you’re my grandson,” Padmé Naberrie spoke in a voice clear as a copper bell. 

She didn’t glow blue like a Force ghost; when she stepped out of the shade, the sunlight painted her skin in tones of peach and gold. 

Ben climbed to his feet and immediately bowed low in the style of the Naboo court. “Grandmother.”

“None of that,” she chided him kindly. “We don’t have much time. Stand up straight so I can get a good look at you.” Ben blushed under her scrutiny, then under the beaming smile she gave him. “What a handsome young man you are,” she said.

“To my grandmother’s eyes, perhaps,” Ben replied, unable to fully shake the formality from his tone.

Padmé’s laughter filled the clearing like a cascade of chimes. “Modest, too. You certainly don’t get _that_ from your grandfather.”

“No, I got other things from him,” slipped out before Ben could think better of it.

His grandmother nodded thoughtfully, and her face grew serious. “The Force is something I wish I’d understood better during my life. Just as I wish Anakin had understood the value of politics and diplomacy.”

Another thing Ben and his grandfather had in common. Ben managed to hold his tongue so Padmé could continue.

“Ben, I came here to talk to you about Sheev Palpatine,” she said, “a man who understood the Force and also understood politics. A man who used his knowledge of both to manipulate an entire galaxy and bring it to the edge of ruin.”

“All children of the New Republic learn this lesson in their first history modules, myself included,” Ben replied. “That’s why there’s no excuse for my foolishness—”

“I don’t want to hear that word from you. You are _not_ a fool,” Padmé cut him off, the sweetness in her voice replaced abruptly with steel. “Palpatine hid the fact that he was a Sith Lord from the entire Jedi Order. Are you more clever than Grand Master Yoda? Than your namesake, Master Kenobi? Than your grandfather, than all those Jedi who failed to identify Sidious when he was right under their noses?”

“I didn’t say I was—”

“But that’s what you imply. And what about the Senate? Are you wiser than Bail Organa and Mon Mothma? If you had been senator of Naboo in my place, would you have detected the threat to democracy that Palpatine represented?”

“I would never presume—”

“Hundreds of the galaxy’s greatest minds. Brilliant politicians, powerful Force users. All of them working together failed to stop the Emperor from rising. Who are _you_ , Ben Solo, to think that you could have fought him off all by yourself?”

“I should have! I should have been able to!” Ben exploded. 

Padmé’s visage flickered in the onslaught of emotions he couldn’t contain, and Ben sank to his knees, burning with shame. When he dared to look up, his grandmother was still there. She seemed unharmed by his outburst but dimmer, diminished in spirit. She was sad.

“That’s the first truly foolish thing you’ve said,” Padmé sighed. “You shouldn’t have been able to do it alone, Ben, because you shouldn’t have _been_ alone. You shouldn’t have learned about Palpatine from a history book like the other children of the New Republic. You should have learned about him from your family. They should have shared their own fears, their own failures and triumphs, so that you would understand it’s okay to struggle, to fail and to learn from your mistakes and strive to be better. And above all, they should have held you and kissed you and told you until you were sick of hearing it that they would be with you for every part of that struggle.”

A sob broke from Ben’s lips, and he buried his face in his hands. “That’s all I ever wanted,” he wept, reduced to a pitiful child.

“Don’t be ashamed to want connection. To want help,” Padmé said. “In that you are as human as the rest of us, Ben. My handsome, clever, modest, wise, strong boy.” In the Force, Ben could feel his grandmother’s fingers card through his hair and her breath on his cheek when she whispered, “Rey is lucky to be stuck with you.”

On another whisper, Padmé dissipated with the last of the morning dew.

The wind shifted, as did the Force as Anakin stepped into the clearing again. “So that’s your grandma,” he said. “Isn’t she something?”

“I see why Rey reminds you of her,” Ben replied. “Such a presence...are you certain she wasn’t Force sensitive?”

“Padmé didn’t need the Force. She was a force all on her own. Until...”

“She died in childbirth. That’s when you fell,” Ben ventured. 

Anakin’s face darkened; the entire sky darkened with it. “It isn’t,” he replied sharply.

“When did you?” Ben asked as only another Skywalker would dare in the face of that gathering storm. “Why did you turn, grandfather?”

Anakin looked distracted for a moment, and then the sky cleared as if nothing at all had occurred. “Another time,” he said. His voice was strained, and his image was starting to waver. “I guess you lovebirds will be heading off to Exegol now?” he asked.

“I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”

“Clear skies, kiddo. Oh, just one more thing.”

“I’m adopted?”

“When the moment comes, trust her. Believe in your bond. Believe in your love. If he divides you, he wins,” Anakin said.

“Thank you, grandfather.”

“The Force will be with you, my child. I'll make sure of it.”

* * *

The wayfinder was charred but still functional. A woozy sensation coursed through Rey’s body when she lifted it off the console, but no dark twin appeared seeking parley. She tucked the Sith device into her satchel and carefully retraced her path through the precarious wreckage.

She was also careful not to touch the bond. Just because she and Ben were a dyad didn’t mean they wouldn’t need privacy sometimes. It was easier to control the connection now, as if accepting it had convinced the Force that they could be trusted with that responsibility on their own. 

From now on, if there were shirtless encounters or interstellar hand touches, they would occur when Rey and Ben wanted them to.

Still, it was hard not to reach out and check on him. To distract herself, Rey went through her scavenger’s checklist for salvaging a fresh shipwreck. She was considering if there might be any unburned hyperfuel in the TIE’s auxiliary tank that they could siphon for the catamaran when she heard a friendly “Crup-crup?” by her elbow.

“Good morning, matron,” Rey greeted the Lanai with half a bow, which the leader of the Caretakers returned. They both eyed the smoking wreckage, which dominated the beach like the carcass of a prehistoric sea creature. Rey rubbed at the back of her neck, probably grinding fresh soot into her skin. “This one was me,” she sighed. “Sorry for the mess.”

// Destruction is part of the dyad’s nature, // Alcida-Auka replied diplomatically. 

Also diplomatically, she did not ask if the dyad spent a pleasant night in the temple. 

She held out the basket of food that Rey and Ben had left behind in their rush to speak with Anakin. // For your journey. I’ve added a jar of my thala-siren yogurt. Fermented three times for extra sourness. //

“Thank you. And please give our thanks to all your sisters and brothers for their kind reception last night. I wish we could stay longer.”

// You will return. Perhaps not in my lifetime, or in my daughter’s daughter’s lifetime. When you do, the Lanai will be here to welcome you. //

A frisson of guilt skittered down Rey’s spine. She wanted to warn the matron about the threat to the galaxy that might mean the end of the Lanai and this entire island if she and Ben were to fail in their mission. Instead, she knelt down in the sand and pulled Alcida-Auka into a fierce hug.

If the matron found this behavior unbecoming of a dyad, she had the good grace not to let it show.

* * *

Something had broken Sidious’ hold on the Skywalker boy. Or rather, someone.

He hadn’t foreseen this. Leia’s hatred for Anakin ran deep and pure. She had been Sidious’ unwitting accomplice throughout Ben Solo’s life, shielding him from the only person who might have led him beyond Sidious’ reach. Her change of heart and her sacrifice at this crucial juncture were most inconvenient. 

The scavenger girl by contrast had never been easy to control. Only in her moments of greatest vulnerability was Sidious able to slip a suggestion through her walls, and even those went largely ignored. Now she turned up her nose at the illustrious family history he’d concocted for her. A pity. She could have been a happy host for him if she’d only allowed herself to believe the tale. A happy host was a compliant host. A compliant host lived longer.

No matter. It was far too late for Anakin Skywalker to save either of them. Every moment brought the last Skywalker and his consort closer to the destiny that Sidious had chosen for them. The anticipation was a delicious new layer of agony on top of all the others.

* * *

Rey closed her mind to the poisonous whispering that issued from the wayfinder and deposited it on the nav station in the catamaran’s pristine cockpit. Bits of soot flaked off and skittered across the alabaster console, earning some complaints from an enterprising pair of porgs that had stolen on board and were in the process of constructing a nest out of local organic material and what seemed to be garishly colored silk scarves.

Rey set the basket of snacks out of their reach and leaned over the captain’s chair to give Ben an upside-down kiss. “I exchanged farewells with the matron of the Lanai. How did it go with your grandfather?” she asked, swatting at a trio of juvenile porgs piled on the co-pilot’s chair.

“Leave them be," Ben said. "I’ve tried to convince them to abandon ship but they won’t hear of it.” 

He fit his hands to Rey’s waist and pulled her onto his lap. Like upside-down kisses, and all kisses, really, it was new for them, but it didn’t feel new. It felt like home.

“I’ll tell you everything once we’re underway,” Ben said. “First, I have something for you. I sensed it last night, on our way to the temple, and I went to retrieve it after I ran the pre-flight checks. That’s probably when the beakless birds got in,” he muttered.

“They’re called porgs. They colonized the _Falcon_ in a matter of days. Chewie was beside himself. They even managed to gnaw through the...Ben. _Ben_. Is that…”

“My mother’s lightsaber,” he whispered reverently, gazing down at the blade in consternation. “I never even knew she’d built one.”

“Neither did I.”

“It called to me,” he marveled. “The moment I touched it, I understood. I saw her. I saw my mother. She was young. She was sparring with my uncle. She had excellent form,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

Rey saw the vision play out in his mind, and she saw the truth the kyber crystal revealed next. “She gave it up. The saber, her training, all of it. She did it to protect you.”

Tears stood in Ben’s eyes. “I was so angry with her for so long. I thought she’d washed her hands of me. She was just doing what she thought would keep me safe.” He blinked the tears away and gave her a sardonic twist of his lips. “I had to go into Luke’s hut to retrieve this. That’s how much I love you.”

“Wow, that much?” Rey shook her head when he offered her the saber. “Ben, Leia’s saber called to _you_. I’ve been on this island twice now and I didn’t even know it was here.”

“I was meant to find it, but you were meant to wield it,” he said. His conviction was absolute. “This blade has never drawn blood. It has never tasted death.”

“I hope it never will,” Rey said.

Ben held the saber out to her again. “That is precisely why it belongs in your hands.”

Rey let him place the weapon across her open palms. The kyber inside pulsed with satisfaction, as did Ben’s side of the bond. “I will wield this saber in Leia’s name,” Rey said. “I will use it as she would have: to defend peace and justice, and to protect the people I love.”

Rey secured the saber to her belt and cupped her hands around Ben’s jaw. She leaned forward and kissed away the tears that had begun to spill over his cheeks. “Thank you, _cyare_ ,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Good. Then I’ll get out of your way.”

He lifted her off his lap and deposited her in the pilot’s seat, which he’d very kindly warmed up by sitting in it himself. “You’re letting me pilot?” she asked. “After I blew up your last two ships?”

“Letting you? I never conceived of any other arrangement. Do you prefer for me to fly? Is it the ship? I recognize that it’s an utterly pretentious bauble, and has absurd features like those seat warmers, but—”

“No, no, I’ll fly it! It looks like fun!” Rey said. She rescued a pair of pilot’s gloves that the porglets were trying to eat and was surprised to find that they fit her perfectly. “Can you get that spooky Sith contraption working? Just holding it gives me a headache.”

“Aye aye, skipper,” he said, snapping off a salute worthy of General Hux himself. 

“How are we going to let the Resistance know how to reach Exegol?” Rey asked while she familiarized herself with the controls.

“I suspect their informant on the Supreme Council has already sent them the navigation data, but just in case, we’ll also be transmitting ours using the kind of old school tech you rebels seem to adore,” Ben said, and he tossed her a dinged up binary beacon he’d already activated. 

Just seeing that blinking blue light and knowing that it meant her friends were on their way made Rey tear up. 

“Great!” she chirped to keep her sentimentality from leaking into the bond. “Well then, just sit back, relax and enjoy the _hooooly hell!_ ” she shouted as the ship nearly flew out from under her and Ahch-To’s blue sky transitioned smoothly to star-studded black. “What was that?”

“That was how a properly functioning ship moves out of atmo. Note the distinct lack of bone-rattling tremors and loose parts tumbling across the deck.” The nav computer beeped a confirmation. “There. The wayfinder’s hooked in. We’ve got a few hours of real space to cross before our first jump. Just put her on auto-pilot whenever you get bored.”

“You’ll be waiting for me in the captain’s quarters, I presume?” 

Ben’s cock twitched in immediate response, and the sensation of it in the bond startled a delighted giggle out of Rey. Her heart jumped to lightspeed and dragged Ben’s along for the ride. She was already reaching for the autopilot when her stomach growled loudly enough to startle the porgs.

“Mm. Breakfast first, then,” Ben smirked. “Breakfast, and a shower, I think.”

Of course. Dyad or no, there was probably a limit to the amount of her grime and sweat that he would be willing to tolerate.

Ben was already halfway out the door, but he caught on to her thoughts and strode back toward her, gripped the seat of the captain’s chair and spun her around to face him. Rey squeaked in surprise when he buried his nose in her tunic, just under her arm where the stink was probably the worst, but he groaned in a decidedly non-disgusted way and clutched the back of the chair to keep from collapsing on top of her. 

“I love the way you smell,” he moaned, his deep baritone muffled by her clothes. “I couldn’t perceive your scent when we connected through the Force. Now that you’re physically here, I can’t get enough of it. It’s like a fucking mating call.”

Rey swooned at the base arousal he released into the bond, and the world suddenly tilted sideways. She blinked the haze out of her eyes just enough to notice that it wasn’t the world but the ship that had rotated, and that it had done so because she was yanking haphazardly on the controls. She scrambled to correct their course and activate the autopilot, and Ben stepped away to give her room to work, his dirty hair in tangles that stuck up in all directions, his own scent a mating call that Rey needed no urging to answer.

She did not want to answer it in front of the porgs, though. “Why shower at all, then?” she asked instead of tackling Ben to the deck. “Seems like it would be a waste of water to wash this off.”

A dangerous glint flashed in his eyes. “It won’t be a waste,” he told her. He plucked the basket of Lanai leftovers from its perch and swung it onto his arm. “The shower isn’t only for washing.”


	9. Shortcuts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this one into two chapters, so we will have our final confrontation on Exegol in the next one. It's mostly written, but I didn't want to rush it!

Ben had seen a lot of filthy thoughts in his thirty years. 

As a boy, he’d hide in his mother’s skirts to try to escape the weird things grown-ups thought about in the streets of Hanna City and the halls of the Senate. 

When he was a bit older, he would giggle at the lewd images floating in the minds of Han Solo’s sabacc opponents, then nudge his dad to bet or fold depending on which cards floated amongst those images. 

More recently, he would fling aside the perverted fantasies and memories of lurid sexual encounters in the minds of his interrogation subjects to retrieve the secrets of interest to the First Order.

Now, he drew on every raunchy, depraved thought he’d ever suffered or stolen and used it to give Rey pleasure. 

And damned if his dyad didn’t have some ideas of her own for giving it right back.

“Niima was full of sleemos,” she murmured against his inner thigh after an inspired blowjob that left Ben in a boneless heap on the shower’s marble bench. “I couldn’t read their minds, but they weren’t shy about telling me outright what they wanted me to do for them with my mouth. In plenty of detail.”

“I hope you busted their teeth in,” Ben sighed, still rubbing the stars out of his eyes, “or we’ll be going there next to burn down the entire outpost.”

“Sure did. I’ll tell you all about it while Beex makes us some more of those spicy noodles...”

Rey liked spicy food almost as much as Chewie did. Ben liked to watch her noisily slurp the noodles while she perched on the galley prep counter. Then he liked to stand between her legs and lap up every drop of the piquant sauce that had dripped onto her chin.

“We should name this ship,” Rey said as she dropped a string of feather-light kisses back and forth across Ben’s clavicle and the soft dip of his throat.

They were recovering on the divan in the captain’s quarters after experimenting with an acrobatic position a Twi’lek had unwittingly projected from the doorway of a Corellian pleasure house on one of Ben’s only trips away from the temple with his father. The move was tricky to execute without lekku, but the Force provided the extra appendages and counterweight when called upon.

Definitely not a technique that was documented in any Jedi text, sacred or otherwise.

“How about the _Porg’s Nest_?” Rey suggested.

“Good name. For a pirate ship,” Ben replied.

“Alright then, you Core-coddled snob, what would you name it?” she challenged him, rolling to her other side and wriggled backward adorably until she was spooned against him.

Ben stroked along Rey’s flank, marveling at the warmth of her skin and the way the Force inside her followed his touch from the curve of her breast to her hip and back again. “I’d call it _Heaven_ ,” he said.

The Light coursed through their bond, suffusing Ben’s entire body with Rey’s affection and amusement. She stretched like a Corellian sand panther, curling more closely against him. “Ben Solo, Master of the Knights of Cheese,” she teased him. “Oh! Do you think Beex has any cheese?”

They ate, they fucked, they fucked some more, they ate again. They agreed they would always prepare for battle this way. They did not agree on a name for this ship.

“The _Hashoop_ ,” Ben suggested.

“What...the hell...is a h-h-hashoop?” Rey gasped as he slipped into her from behind, gently this time because they were both starting to get sore, even with the Force to aid their recovery.

 _It’s an Ewok legend_ , he sent, trailing kisses down her spine, _a princess who can hear the voices of the stars._ Ben reared above her on the mess of bedsheets they’d pulled onto the floor and framed her bottom with his hands. “You have the sweetest little ass, _cyar’ika_.”

“Kark’s sake Ben, how many...obscure— _mmmm_ —mythological... _ngaaaaah_...references do I h-h-h-have to reject before you _yeeep!_ Oi! Your finger does _not_ go in there!” she growled.

“Mm. We’ll see.” 

It wasn’t the only thing he planned on putting in there.

Eventually they did have to emerge from their trysting to check on the ship’s course. “There’s a shortcut we can take right after we make the next jump,” Ben told Rey as he pulled up the holochart and she shooed the porgs off the console. “We’ll hop from this hyperlane to the next one over. That way we’ll avoid the Maw entirely. Save us about six hours.” 

Six hours that Ben would have preferred to spend making love to Rey, but, well, the galaxy was counting on them and all that.

“We’re going to lightspeed skip between two hyperlanes? Will the Resistance still be able to track the beacon if we do that?” she asked, pulling her legs underneath the hem of his black undershirt, the one with the hole in it. It was the only thing she was wearing, and that was doing strange things to Ben’s concentration.

_Ben?_

“Huh? Yeah,” he finally managed to answer her. He cleared his throat and pointed to the holochart. “The whole maneuver will only take a few moments in real time. We’ll skip back into our current hyperlane at this junction here. If the Resistance is following the beacon, it will appear as if we never deviated from our course. Though I’m sure they’ve got the hard nav data from their spy by now,” he reassured her.

She was not reassured. “Ben, that’s not a junction. That’s the last known position of the Kafrene asteroid belt.”

“Correct. It’s also the point where the hyperlanes are closest together. If we time it right, we can coast from one lane to the other without dropping into realspace in between. I guess technically it wouldn’t be a lightspeed skip then,” he mused.

“And if we _don’t_ time it right, we can be smashed to smithereens in the asteroid field!” Rey exclaimed. “You know how unpredictable these fields are, how they shift and change location. There’s no way to know whether it’ll be obstructing our flight path until it’s too late!”

“No way, huh?” Ben cinched his fluffy purple bathrobe tighter and tossed his hair out of his face. He reached for the autopilot release.

“Wait! Wait. You’re going to do something with the Force, aren’t you?”

“It’s difficult for me to do things _without_ the Force,” he reminded her.

“Is it instinctive astrogation?” she blurted, curiosity zinging through the bond. “There was a bit of theory about it in the _Rammahgon_. I didn’t dare try it on my own, not when our ships were so scarce already, but...will you teach me?”

Ben grinned harder than he had in years. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

Rey crinkled up her nose at him, but she let the remark go, bouncing eagerly in her seat. “What’s first? We reach out, right?”

“Yes, we do,” Ben replied, but instead of reaching for the Force, he reached for Rey and kissed her. Thoroughly.

“Mmm,” she hummed. The vibration danced over Ben’s tongue and straight down to his groin. 

_Is this how Luke taught you?_ she sent.

“Ugh, you really know how to spoil the mood sometimes,” Ben griped.

“We’re coming up on our mark. Teach now, kiss later.”

“Mind your manners, Padawan.”

She smirked and blinked those big hazel eyes, lowered her gaze to the deck, and dropped every mental defense, leaving herself completely open to him. “Yes, master,” she whispered.

This woman was going to be the death of him. Again.

* * *

Poe had to go down to the hold himself to convince Threepio to leave Leia and Artoo on the _Tantive IV_ and transfer over to the _Falcon_ for the final jump to Exegol. He even had to give the protocol droid a commlink so Artoo would be able to reach him “in case he needed anything.”

Poe wondered if Threepio’s memory restoration had scrambled his behavioral processes or if this was just how pre-Clone Wars era droids dealt with grief. Either way, it was just one more headache on a list a hundred parsecs long that Poe was dealing with as co-general of this operation.

“Was it like this for you, too?” Poe asked the shrouded remains of his mentor. “You always seemed to have everything under control. On the inside, did it feel like an absolute circus?” 

He sighed and sat down on one of the cargo crates closest to the hoverbed where Leia rested in state. During the long haul, many Resistance members had come to pay respects to the fallen general. There were small trinkets tucked around her. Dozens of notes written long-hand on flimsies had been stuck to the bulkheads with bonding tape. 

“I’m not ready,” Poe whispered. Not ready to do this without her. Not ready to say goodbye.

“Poe?”

“Kaydel,” he replied, probably too informally, to his chief communications officer, who, also probably too informally, sat down next to him on the crate. “Kriff, Finn mentioned that something was wrong with the small fighter comm relays to the volunteer fleet and I said I’d take a look, didn’t I?”

“You did, but we fixed that hours ago,” Kaydel shrugged. 

“Kriff,” Poe said again.

“Anyway that’s not why I came down here. I came to see if something’s wrong with your commlink. You haven’t been answering it.”

“I—stang, you know what? I gave it to Threepio. Don’t ask me to explain why.”

“I don’t have time to ask why. Brought you a new one,” she said, handing it to him. “Gonna need you to answer it for the next few hours, General.”

“Yes ma’am.” 

Poe clipped the device to his jacket and did his best not to slump over in exhaustion, but Kaydel wasn’t buying it. “Right about now, you’re probably wondering if things are always this insane,” she said.

“Is it that obvious?”

Kaydel studied the impromptu memorial that had sprouted around Leia. “One thing I observed about General Organa during our years working together is that she was a master at compartmentalizing. She could section off problems and tasks, even wall off her own emotions. Well, most of the time,” the young officer smiled, probably remembering one of the times the general chose to let those emotions loose on some unlucky soul. “But don’t think for a minute that Leia had everything under control. She just had more time to perfect her mask.”

“So I need to get a mask?” Poe chuckled.

“Maybe you can use Kylo Ren’s. He won’t be needing it in solitary confinement.”

“Haha right.” 

Bringing the Supreme Leader to justice was at the top of the Resistance leadership’s to-do list, but it didn’t feel right to sit in front of his dead mother and joke about him spending the rest of his life in a hole.

Informing everyone that Kylo Ren was Leia’s son was not high on Poe’s personal to-do list. 

He checked his new comm and found a perfect excuse to change the subject. “I gotta get over to the _Falcon_. Lando’s mouthy nav computer remembered a smuggler’s shortcut that could shave four or five hours off our route to Exegol.”

“One second. I have something for General Organa.”

“Of course. I’ll head up, you take all the time you need.”

“Stay, Poe. I think she’d want you to hear this, too. Artoo, would you mind?” Kaydel asked.

The droid rolled forward and let Kaydel slide a data card into his drive. There was no image to project, just audio. It was a song, a lullaby that had become well-known across the galaxy more than thirty years ago as the eulogy of an entire people. Now, in the cluttered hold of a ship hurtling toward war, the Princess of Alderaan would hear it one last time:

_Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember  
_ _When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember  
_ _Those you have loved but are gone  
_ _Those who kept you so safe and warm  
_ _The mirrorbright moon lets you see  
_ _Those who have ceased to be  
_ _Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers  
_ _Those you loved are with you still—  
_ _The moon will help you remember_

“General Organa is still with us, Poe,” Kaydel spoke after the final notes of the melody faded into the hum of the ship’s engines. “We may not always see her, but she’s there. I can almost feel her right now.”

Artoo hooted a somber agreement with Kaydel’s statement.

An odd current that had no place in the sealed cargo hold grazed the back of Poe’s neck. “Damn it, Connix, how am I supposed to _compartmentalize_ with you making me feel all these emotions!” he shouted. He swiped at the tears on his cheeks and jumped to his feet. “Come on, lieutenant commander, we’ve got a war to win.”

* * *

Flying with Ben was like fighting Snoke’s guards, only _better_.

Rey sensed an asteroid in their path and Ben adjusted course; Ben had a flash of intuition and Rey increased their speed to outrun a gust of solar winds. When they combined their Force abilities, the ship operated more efficiently, more responsively, pushing beyond what should have been the limit of its capabilities.

It was magical. It was—what was the word Ben had used before? 

“Sublime,” she sighed when they coasted back into their original hyperlane and emerged from what Ben called _mutual meditation_. 

He put the ship back on autopilot and lolled against the co-pilot’s chair, face flushed, eyes heavy-lidded, a blissed-out smile quivering at the corners of his mouth. His fluffy bathrobe was half open, revealing pecs and abs and doing not much to conceal the raging hard-on Rey could feel as if the weight and strain were growing between her own legs.

By now, Rey was used to the dyad reflex that kicked in as soon as their minds uncoupled. An immediate urge to connect again, to fall into each other, to be _one_ in any way possible. 

“We haven’t done it in here yet,” Rey observed, glancing around the cockpit.

“What about the porgs?” Ben asked as she straddled his lap and slipped her hands inside his robe to splay them across his chest.

“They’re asleep. We’ll just have to be really...really quiet,” she whispered into his open mouth.

A tremor in the Force, a ping from the nav computer, and the ship dropped out of hyperspace. 

Into the midst of a First Order armada.

“Cloak us,” Ben snapped at the same time that Rey shouted “Droids!” 

She twisted in his lap and gestured at the controls to activate the cloaking shields while Ben raised his hand and Force-pushed aside a pair of communications droids they were about to smash into.

“Thought we had another hour!” Rey huffed. She scurried off of Ben and into the pilot’s seat, porg feathers fluttering around her as the poor terrified creatures, now very much awake, flapped as fast as they could to the safety of an open footlocker. “Guess we pushed the ship faster than we realized. How did the Order get here before we did?"

“Slave circuit,” Ben answered, staring hard at the planet in front of them.

“Oh, that’s clever. Hope Rose thinks to do that. Maybe I can try to get a comm through to—”

“The knights are here, too.”

Rey felt his sense of them, six knots of razor-sharp chaos burning against the crackling dissonance of the planet. “They’re on the surface,” she realized with him. “And they know you’ve arrived.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Ben shuddered. 

Rey finally noticed the creeping tentacles that had begun to press against his mind, testing for weaknesses. She knew there were none, because she’d sealed those wounds herself on Kef Bir. But some trauma was beyond Force healing. 

Rey reached for calm, and she and Ben both spent several precious seconds fortifying their mental defenses as they cruised between two star destroyers, undetectable as long as no one happened to be looking out the viewport.

To minimize that risk, Rey turned her attention to a dial she’d discovered while exploring the console earlier. A small hologram of the _Porg’s Nest_ sprang up, shifting colors until the outer hull gleamed a sleek, shiny black.

“There’s like fifteen different finishes!” she said, mostly to disrupt Ben’s obsessive double- and triple-checking of his mental walls. “This one seems appropriate for the occasion, don’t you think?”

Ben roused himself, still eyeing the planet warily. “The Order is just as likely to blow us up no matter what color our ship is,” he informed Rey as he stabbed at the keypad on the comms panel.

Rey batted in annoyance at the poisoned tendrils of the Force that wanted to drag them and the _Nest_ out of orbit. “Transmitting your personal clearance code, Supreme Leader?” she asked.

“Sending that would get us spaced for sure,” Ben grumbled. “This is a code we issue to bounty hunters.”

“They’re less likely to blast a bounty hunter than their own Supreme Leader?”

“I’m not proud of it.”

_My children._

Bile rose in Rey’s throat at the sensation of the Emperor’s voice pushing directly into her mind.

_At last you have arrived._

“Oh we’ve arrived alright,” Rey snarled. “Ben, I think we should—Ben?”

He’d gone rigid beside her, though he was quaking from head to toe with fear and with physical cold. He was gritting his teeth so hard that Rey felt the ache in her own jaw. “Ben, we’re okay. _You’re_ okay.” 

A battle was going on behind his eyes, but there was no opponent other than himself. Rey stroked his forehead and pushed warmth and love through the bond until his tremors quieted.

“Okay. Okay,” he whispered. His throat bobbed as he acknowledged a transmission from his flagship. “Code’s cleared. Head for the _Steadfast_. That destroyer over there. We’ll set down and regroup.”

“I think we should split up,” Rey countered. “You put on your Kylo Ren costume and get the Order in hand while I go down there—”

“It’s not a _costume_ , it’s a uniform.”

“Ben, we’re doing this. The Resistance will arrive in a couple of hours, and you’re the only one who can stop the First Order from attacking them the instant they drop into the system. I’ll be a perfect distraction for Sidious. He won’t even think about launching his fleet until we’re both down there. This will work.”

She knew he felt the truth of it just as she did, but he shook his head. “This is not what we planned.”

“Well the plan didn’t account for the First Order getting here before we did,” Rey said.

“You’re not going down there alone.” 

“ _You_ went down there alone.”

“Which was stupid,” Ben pointed out.

“Listen, swabbie, I’m captain of this vessel and I—”

“Rey!” he thundered. 

A few of the fuses in the console blew, and some indicators flared out with a _pop_ and a sizzle of ozone. 

Rey cocked an eyebrow and waited semi-patiently for Ben to get himself under control. “Care to try that again?” she asked. 

“Rey,” he said, and nothing exploded this time, “you’re not going down there without me. That’s exactly what Sidious wants, to divide us! If he divides us, he wins.”

“Nothing and no one will divide us, Ben. I believe that. I need you to believe it, too.”

 _Trust her_ , they both heard Anakin’s voice whisper.

Every muscle in Ben’s face was flinching and twitching by turns, but he finally mumbled, “Drop me off in the hangar.”

“That’s the spirit!” Rey grinned. “You’re not going dressed like that, though, are you? I doubt the Supreme Leader traipses around his flagship in a bathrobe.”

“Ah, yes. My _costume_ ,” he grumbled.

Rey flew casual, maneuvering among the gargantuan star destroyers at a velocity that was more tourist than bounty hunter. She had ignored two pings from the _Steadfast_ when she felt the bond compress and Ben stepped back into the cockpit.

Dressed as Supreme Leader Lando Calrissian, Jr.

The black silk shirt and black leather pants and boots were already enough to earn a double take. The black cape, complete with silver trim and red lining, though, that was just...

One of the porgs hopped out of the foot locker and tugged gamely at the hem of the cape.

“It’s not my fault,” Ben preempted the comments he could see forming in her head. 

“I can’t help thinking it, but I wasn’t going to say anything, I swear!”

“The droid that runs the closet thinks it’s still 5 ABY. And that its master runs a spice den for the rich and tacky,” he sniffed. “Half the stuff in there is for you, by the way. Mostly evening gowns and lingerie. Kriffing Lando,” he muttered.

“Are you mad at him for sending those things or because you might not get to see me in them?” 

She meant it as a joke, but she began picking at the soft fabric of the oversized shirt she was wearing. _His_ shirt. It hit her that in a few moments, this tattered shirt would be all she had left of him.

Ben must have felt her wavering, but he didn’t press her to change her mind about splitting up. He also didn’t promise that he would see her in those wisps of shimmersilk and lace. Instead, he bent his tall frame over the captain’s chair until Rey was sheltered on all sides by his body, his scent, and his cape. 

“The truth is, I prefer you naked,” Ben murmured, the rumble of his voice filling their improvised cocoon.

“I know,” Rey whispered. 

Her breath caught as Ben gently pressed his thumb between her lips and hooked it behind her bottom teeth, coaxing her jaw open. There was nothing gentle about the way he proceeded to kiss her, plundering her mouth and sucking on her tongue with hungry, demanding grunts.

The console pinged with yet another hail from the _Steadfast_ , more frantic than the last two if that was possible. “I hope you’re going to demote that deck officer,” Rey rasped, the taste of Ben’s tongue still coating her throat, “or we’re coming back up here later to throttle the entire crew.”

“He’ll probably drop dead on his own when he sees who jumps out of this ship,” Ben assured her. He brushed his lips across the tip of her nose and flashed a toothy grin. “See you down there, sweetheart.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Rey whispered to his retreating back. 

She turned back to the controls and crunched her fist down on the comms alert to cut off the incessant pinging. Then she engaged the thrusters to move the _Nest_ as close to the entrance of the destroyer’s main hangar as she could without passing through the airlock. 

“Damn that’s a lot of bucketheads,” she couldn’t help muttering at the sight of row upon row of stormtroopers just beyond her viewport. As always, they reminded her of Finn. “Hope you all make it,” she sighed.

A tug from Ben’s end of the bond let Rey know he was in position, so she flicked a switch to override the top hatch’s autolock and got ready to silence the safety alarm.

“Attention human passengers,” a buttery female voice purred out of the mainframe. “The sundeck is intended to be enjoyed during in-atmo cruises only. Attempting to access the sundeck or the rooftop swimming pool while cruising outside atmo may result in a gruesome, painful death. Thanks for listening, and have fun!”

“Kriffing Lando,” Rey chuckled.

A streak of black and red whipped past the viewport as Ben leaped from the _sundeck_ onto the bow of the catamaran. He was drawing on the power of their dyad to sustain him and to summon the infinitesimal glimmers of the Force that existed in stardust to propel his body through the vacuum of space. He may have drawn too much, because he landed on the bow with a heavy _thump_ that was audible through the transparisteel.

“Careful, you’ll scratch the finish,” Rey winced.

Ben took two running strides and sprang off the ship’s prow, framed by the illuminated entrance of the _Steadfast_ ’s hangar for just an instant, his hair and cape black as space, floating weightlessly behind him, his bare hands a ghostly white in the glare of the hangar lights. 

Then, he dove out across the void. 

Rey felt his exhilaration right along with the burning in his lungs and the immense pressure on his bones, his organs, his _eyeballs_ that would have crushed almost anyone else.

She was starting to worry when, with a rather graceful flip, Ben touched down safely on the polished deck within the destroyer’s artificial environment.

Inside the catamaran, the pressure on Rey’s lungs eased, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She gave herself one more moment to admire her bondmate’s courage, his agility, and the way his ass looked in those leather pants. Then she swung the _Nest_ around and aimed it at Exegol. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to make sure I get Exegol exactly the way I see it in my head, but I'm going to try my best to post it before Easter. It will be the last chapter before our HEA epilogue.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has been commenting and leaving kudos on this story. I never expected such overwhelmingly positive feedback and so many people sticking with it until the end. You guys are the spark that has rekindled the fire of my love for SW!!


	10. Exegol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, people. 
> 
> At 11,449 words, this final chapter is an absolute beast, but you've waited long enough for it and I didn't see a good place to split it up again. Take regular breaks during your reading for water and also for hand washing if you're in Coronaville like me (I hope you and your loved ones are healthy).
> 
> #StayHome and #StayReylo

Stormtroopers and officers snapped to attention as Ben stalked across the hangar and into a turbolift. He’d only been away for a few days, but his body hardly remembered how to perform Kylo Ren’s lurching stride. The darkness and expectations that used to weigh down his every movement were no longer there. When he reached the bridge, however, his face quickly remembered how to scowl at General Hux and Allegiant General Pryde.

“Ah, Supreme Leader, so glad you could join us,” Hux oozed. 

A tense hush fell over the entire bridge. A couple of mouse droids scurried out of Ben’s path. A young lieutenant—Mitaka, Ben thought he was called—stared up at him from the crew pit with bulging, porg-like eyes. All other souls on the bridge kept their gazes fixed on their work stations, scarcely daring to breathe.

Ben’s face burned with shame. “As you were,” he ordered them. “Hux, report.”

Hux looked Ben up and down, as usual finding much that met his disapproval. “From the lack of mask and the new clothes I surmise that you’ve been cloistered away with your stylist while we did all the work to prepare for your glorious ascension to emperor? You even managed to have that scar repaired. Well done, sir. Just in time for the holocameras.”

“The fleet is ready to deploy, Supreme Leader,” Pryde cut in. “All that is needed is your command to relay the navigation data to the communications towers, and the Empire will be reborn.”

“Change of plans,” Ben informed them. “We’re not deploying the fleet. We’re giving it to the Resistance.”

Suddenly almost everyone was looking at him. The crew and officers in shock. Hux in disgust.

Pryde was old school, and neither his face nor his surface thoughts revealed any reaction. He shook his head slightly as if to dislodge some water from his ears. “I’m sorry, Supreme Leader, I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” he said.

“I believe you did. There will be no second Empire, Allegiant General. It is time to let old things die,” Ben declared. 

It had sounded good the first time he’d said it, and it sounded good this time, too. 

He turned his back on Pryde so he would know the matter was closed. Hux did not take the hint.

“Are you truly mad?” the pasty general blustered so hard that some of his red hair was actually dislodged from the aggressive hair gel he favored. “The galaxy is _ours—yours—_ for the taking, Supreme Leader. You’ve won. The Republic is no more. A fleet of ships, each one armed with the power of a Death Star, stands ready to grind every system into submission to the Final Order. As we speak, the dregs of the Resistance are on their way here to try to stop us. We will crush them beneath our—”

“How do you know that?” Ben interrupted, cocking his head to the side as if he didn’t already know the answer.

Hux’s reply was drowned in a warning from the Force that blared like a claxon in Ben’s mind. Ben opened himself to what the Force wanted to show him and saw the scene unfold in double vision:

_Behind Ben, Pryde pulls a blaster. Ben sees Pryde take the shot and is already poised to deflect it when the weapon fires. It ricochets into a console; sparks fly. Ben sees himself reach under his own left arm, sees himself call the weapon from Pryde’s hand. He sees Pryde dive for cover, so when the blaster’s grip smacks into Ben’s palm he’s tracking his target’s movement before he’s even got his finger curled around the trigger. In his mind, Pryde is dead before Ben even takes the shot._

Pryde's body hit the deck with a dull _thud_. Ben’s vision cleared, and he saw that he was already pointing the blaster at Hux, who had fallen to his knees.

“I beg you, Supreme Leader,” the general groveled, “I have been loyal to you despite our differences and I swear on the First Order—”

“General, I'm not going to execute you while you're on your knees.”

“Leader Ren, you are as merciful as you are—”

“Stand up so I can do it properly.”

From the crew pit, someone (it sounded like Mitaka) squeaked in dismay.

Hux’s face somehow blanched even paler than its standard bone-white, but he managed to climb to his feet without pissing himself. “I am...at your disposal, Supreme Leader,” he said with the resigned dignity of the condemned.

Ben raised his off hand, and Hux flinched despite himself. When Ben closed his fist, every officer and member of the crew except Hux slumped to the deck unconscious.

“I’m going to ask you one question,” Ben said, blaster still trained on the only other man left standing. “If you answer honestly, you will be promoted to Allegiant General. If you don’t,” he jerked his chin toward the corpse behind him, “you will join the former Allegiant General. Here is my question, Armitage: why are you spying for the Resistance?”

For the first time that Ben could remember, Hux’s perfect posture wavered. His shoulders slouched forward slightly, as if he were finally free of a terrible burden. “Because it is my absolute belief that you, Kylo Ren, are in no way fit to rule this galaxy, as Supreme Leader, as Galactic Emperor, or in any other capacity,” Hux stated.

 _Truth_ , the Force whispered.

Ben nodded. “I completely agree.” He secured the blaster’s safety and tossed the weapon to his very relieved subordinate. “Thank you for your honesty, Allegiant General Hux. With me, if you please.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader. Thank you, Supreme Leader.” Hux already had his own service weapon holstered at his waist, so he handed Pryde’s off to the next stormtrooper they passed at Ben’s ground-eating pace. “Supreme Leader, if I may be so bold…are you abdicating your position?”

“That _is_ bold. Indulge me just a short while more, Allegiant General, and I’ll be out of your hair forever. Summon the Supreme Council. I want them all here on the _Steadfast_ within the hour.”

“Here? In person? Would it not be more expedient to convene the Council by holoconf—”

Ben stopped, and Hux skidded to a halt, nearly tripping on Ben’s cape. “They will relinquish command of their ships to their first officers and transfer to the _Steadfast_ immediately. Any who do not obey will be banished to the Unknown Regions.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader. Mitaka! Oh. Er, yes, Supreme Leader, I’ll send the order personally. Right away,” Hux said, fumbling for his datapad.

“Excellent. You also sent our navigation data to the Resistance, did you not?"

"Yes," Hux grumbled.

"And when should we expect your Rebel friends to arrive?” 

“Very shortly, sir. Within the hour, if they’ve got any nav computers worth their parts.” 

“We'll soon know if they do. Send an order to all ships. Instruct them _not_ to fire on the Resistance when they arrive.”

Hux’s face twisted up as if he’d eaten some of Alcida-Auka’s thala-siren yogurt, but he nodded sharply. “Yes, Supreme Leader,” he muttered as he stabbed at his datapad.

Ben grunted in satisfaction and set off again toward the conference room. “What did you tell Ap’lek Ren?” he asked when Hux caught up. “Does he know of your treachery?”

“Does he know of yours?” slipped out before Hux could stop it. “I’m sorry! I apologize, Supreme Leader, that was a reflex!”

Ben had a Force choke all lined up but released the power back into the cosmos when he sensed the sudden illumination of thousands of new Force signatures at the edge of the system. 

The Resistance fleet had arrived. Somehow, they’d managed a shortcut of their own.

“Lando,” Ben muttered. “Of course.”

“What was that, Supreme—”

“The Resistance is here.” Ben made a sharp left at the next corridor, Hux jogging to stay at his side. “You will accompany me to negotiate the ceasefire.”

“You’re _sure_ that’s what you want to do,” Hux sighed in defeat.

What Ben _wanted_ to do was to climb into a TIE and haul ass down to Exegol to be by Rey’s side. But he wouldn’t abandon her friends a second time.

Instead, he endured an awkward turbolift ride down to the hangar with his sullen allegiant general and an even more awkward shuttle flight from the _Steadfast_ to the Resistance flagship. He didn’t need the Force to know which one it would be.

Ben navigated smoothly between his muzzled star destroyers and out into the empty expanse beyond, straight toward the _Tantive IV._

* * *

“So what are we dressing for? A night on the town? A board meeting? An orgy?” 

The question came from the disembodied, throaty voice of a BD-3000 vanity droid who introduced herself as “Bettie” and began chattering away while Rey pawed through the flimsy garments on her side of the closet in search of something practical and ideally not see-through.

“Your tall, pale, and handsome partner _Ben_ asked me to dress him as something called a ‘Kylo Ren’,” Bettie nattered on. Rey didn’t care for the way Ben’s name purred out of the droid’s vocabulator. “I had to search the holonet to find out what a ‘Kylo Ren’ was. Didn’t _Ben_ look dashing in the ensemble I put together for him? Unfortunately I didn’t have an adequate mask on hand. Too many sequins on this one, too many feathers on that one. I will have to do more research into this Kylo Ren fetish. You know, I thought Captain Calrissian had introduced me to them all!” the droid giggled breathily.

If they survived this, Rey was going to have a serious talk with Lando about his lifestyle. 

“Are you looking for something appropriate for the opera? The sabacc table? Dinner and dancing?”

Rey tossed aside another shimmersilk gown in frustration. “What do you have that’s appropriate for mortal combat?” she asked.

The lights on the dressing mirror raced around the frame excitedly. “So! It’s some _killer_ couture you’re looking for, is it? Oh ho ho, I knew I was going to like you, madame. May I know the name of my lovely employer?”

“It’s Rey,” she answered, one eye on the chrono and the programmed trajectory of the _Porg’s Nest_ , which was dipping closer and closer to Exegol’s atmosphere by the second. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if you would be so kind...?”

“Certainly, _Rey_ ,” Bettie gushed in the same sultry tone she used when she said _Ben_. “We don’t want to be late for battle. Very bad form. Now let me see…”

A beam flashed out from the dressing mirror and scanned Rey from head to toe, taking measurements that appeared in a tidy list on the glass.

“Finito!” Bettie exclaimed. “Your outfit is being tailored as we speak. Now, let’s talk makeup and hair.”

A shift in the Force alerted Rey that the ship had just entered atmo. “Never mind all that, Bettie, there isn’t time for...hm. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about Alderaanian braiding traditions, would you?”

* * *

The sleek black ship that touched down in front of the knights was not First Order. It wasn’t a military make of any kind. But an enigmatic presence inside it made Cardo Ren lower his arm cannon.

“It’s not the master,” he said what they were all thinking. “But at the same time...it is?”

“The pilot’s shadow is the negative image of Lord Ren’s,” Kuruk said through his vocoder.

“Is it Skywalker?”

The boarding ramp engaged with a hiss of hydraulics and vapor, and the knights all took a cautious step backward.

“I’m gonna blast it,” Kuruk decided, hefting his plasma rifle.

A figure strode out of the vapor. It wasn’t Skywalker.

“It’s a woman,” Cardo stated the obvious.

“It’s the scavenger!” Ushar barked. “Don’t blast her!”

The command proved unnecessary. The rifle was torn from Kuruk’s gauntleted fingers and hurtled through the air to land in the pilot’s bare hand with a loud _smack._ The other knights reached for their weapons but found themselves immobilized where they stood. 

The scavenger continued her unhurried approach, and step by step she was illuminated by the landing lights of her ship: first, a pair of armored black combat boots, then black leggings, a blaster strapped to one thigh, on upwards to a fitted black leather pilot’s jacket with a high collar that was open in front, leaving the column of her throat audaciously unprotected. 

Another step, and the knights could see the hilt of the lightsaber she had holstered over her shoulder, but they didn’t have time to gawk at the rare weapon they would have burned entire planets to obtain, because her next step brought her unmasked face into view.

“Lady Ren,” Ap’lek addressed her with a deference he reserved for very few beings in the galaxy.

Though physically she was at least a head shorter than all of them, Lady Ren’s power in the shadow made her loom as large as their master. She tilted her chin and stared down her nose at them, just as Kylo Ren often did when he wasn’t wearing his mask.

This wasn’t the desert waif the knights had been hunting for almost a year. This was a warrior angel, anointed by the shadow, Kylo Ren’s match and perhaps his doom. 

“We are yours to command, mistress,” Trudgen intoned.

Eyes that blazed like fire-gems seared through each of the knights in turn, as if they were the ones without masks. Her mouth hardened in a grim line, and she raised her hand and cast the shadow into their thoughts, trawling for dissention, disobedience, or outright betrayal of Kylo Ren. 

“I see questions in your mind, Ap’lek Ren,” the lady said. “And I see General Hux. Do you share his uncertainty about Lord Ren’s ability to lead?”

Deception was one of Ap’lek’s strongest skills, but even he didn’t dare attempt it under such an interrogation. “No, my lady,” he answered. “Seeing how the master has turned you has restored my faith in his commitment to the Ren.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded and pulled the shadow back into herself, then released all the knights from her power and tossed Kuruk’s rifle back to him. He and Cardo scrambled to make way as she marched straight between them to examine the entrance of the Emperor’s fortress. She stood with her unguarded back to all six knights, giving them a clear view of two tight braids that criss-crossed at the base of her neck, just above the hilt of her lightsaber.

“Are you all just going to stand there staring at my saber?” she called over her shoulder, “or is someone going to invite me in?”

“Mistress...should we not wait for Lord Ren?” 

She turned around; the shadow was a cloak that billowed out from her to weigh on them all. “Which one of you said that?” she asked softly.

* * *

Ben piloted the shuttle past the range of any possible cover from the First Order ships behind them. Hux clutched the armrests of the copilot’s chair, grinding his teeth audibly.

“We’re completely exposed out here,” Ben’s reluctant passenger hissed. They’re going to vaporize us!” 

The binary beacon stashed under the console was the only insurance Ben had against that, but he was mostly sure it would be enough. Still, he wasn’t going to explain that to Hux. It was too much fun watching the guy sweat.

No Resistance fighters scrambled into attack formation. Nor did they approach to escort the First Order shuttle to their flagship. The entire Resistance fleet hung motionless against the backdrop of stars, stretching as far as the human eye could see in both directions.

“This might be one of the most insane things you’ve ever done,” Hux muttered, jaw clenched tightly.

“I wouldn’t even put it in the top ten.”

No hail came from the _Tantive IV_ , and Ben did not attempt contact. The hangar shields were down, so he began the landing sequence and let the shuttle coast through the entrance. There were no other ships in the hangar, all resources deployed for this last stand, and only two members of the Resistance waited to meet them.

“Poe Dameron,” Hux snarled. “And the traitor, FN-2187. Permission to fire on this Rebel scum, Supreme Leader.”

“Permission denied,” Ben drawled as he powered down the shuttle. “Let’s go. And leave your blaster behind.”

He left his too, but not his lightsaber. Hux was wise enough not to point that out as they disembarked and crossed the hangar.

“General Dameron,” Ben nodded at the Resistance leader.

“What's this look, dictator chic?” Dameron snorted in return.

“It was either this or classy gas station attendant, but I didn’t want anyone to get the two of us mixed up.”

Dameron rolled his eyes. “Nice to see you again, Your Supremeness.”

“Insolent mongrel!” Hux spat. “How _dare_ you speak to your Supreme Leader in such a manner!” 

“You didn't need to bring your guard dog, _Kylo_ ,” Dameron said. “Crew’s got clear instructions to keep out while we have our little chat. Finn and I are unarmed.”

“Ah yes, FN-2187,” Hux sneered. “Only this desperate band of delinquents would take in a stray like you.”

Finn didn’t even spare a glance for Hux. “Where's Rey?” he blurted what he’d been thinking over and over from the moment Ben had appeared in the hangar without her. “Isn’t she with you?”

“The scavenger?” Hux sniffed. “What concern is she of yours, traitor?”

It would only rile Hux more if he knew Ben was colluding with Rey, Snoke’s alleged murderer, so he gave Finn the barest nod and a nudge of reassurance in the Force. To Hux he said out loud, “The traitor’s name is Finn now.”

The former stormtrooper grinned like the sarlacc that swallowed the bantha. “That’s right, and it's _General_ Finn to you, Hux.”

“And _you_ may address me as _Allegiant General_ Hux. What about you, Supreme Leader, will you be taking a new name as well? It seems to be the fashion today.”

“Actually, I'll be taking back my old one.”

Hux startled at that. He was one of the few members of the Order who knew Ben’s family history.

“Look, we’re all busy guys. Can we get to the point?” Dameron said. “I assume you’re here to tell us this is our last chance to surrender, that the Resistance is finished and nothing will stop the rise of the new Empire and yada-yada and so forth?”

It wasn’t exactly the script they’d discussed on Lando’s ship before parting ways, but Ben still recognized his cue.

“Nope,” he replied. “We are here to deliver a peace offering.” He clamped his hand on Hux’s shoulder and thrust him forward. “Here ya go.”

“B-b-but...Supreme Leader!” Hux protested as Finn stepped forward and made a show of patting him down. “I am your Allegiant General!”

“Yes. And as Allegiant General you are a more valuable bargaining chip than a regular general.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, securing Hux’s wrists with a pair of binders. “And once we convict you for leading the stormtrooper program and the destruction of the Hosnian System, you’ll have another new title: Prisoner Number One of the…of the New New Republic!” 

“We’re still working on that name,” Dameron said.

“But...I’m the spy!” Hux interjected, more of his red hair hanging limp across his forehead. 

“Wait. You’re the spy?” Finn repeated.

“I knew it!” Dameron exclaimed.

“I told you the truth, Supreme Leader, and you said—”

“I said I agreed with you that I was not fit to rule the galaxy. And now, thanks to you, I never will. General Dameron, General Finn, I believe this peace offering will begin to make things right?”

“It’s a really good start, Ben,” Finn said. 

Hux startled and looked back and forth between Finn and Dameron. “You _knew...you both knew!_ ” He yanked his arm away from Finn and raised his bound hands to stab an accusing finger in Ben’s face. “You were working with the Resistance the whole time! _Traitor!_ ” he spat, green eyes alight with righteous fury.

Ben just shrugged. “I never believed in half the things the First Order stood for. You built your whole life around them. Which one of us is the bigger traitor?”

The question took more out of Armitage Hux than any Force choke ever had. He backed down and meekly allowed Finn take him in hand again.

Dameron sighed and scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Still gonna arrest you if you don’t die down there,” he said to Ben.

“If I die down there, you will not be in a position to arrest anyone.” 

Ben resisted the urge to tug at the bond, in case Rey was in the thick of things. She would call if she needed him. As if in answer to that thought, a twinge of pain zinged through from her side.

_I'm fine! I'm fine. Ushar stepped on my heel, that's all. Do these guys always walk so close?_

_You're with the knights?!_ The bond wasn’t open wide enough for him to see them, but he could feel the echo of them through Rey’s connection to the Force. 

“He's doing that wall-staring thing again,” he heard Dameron distantly. 

“Sometimes he talks to it,” Hux replied. “It's quite disturbing. So, have fun with that.” 

A flash of cold hit Ben and then cut off abruptly as Rey closed her end of the bond again. “I have to go,” he said to the men before him. “The Supreme Council is en route to the _Steadfast_. Hux will patch you through so you can inform them of their defeat and coordinate the First Order’s surrender. He’ll also help you deactivate those communications towers.”

“I will do no such—”

“Place nice, Hugsie,” Dameron said. “It’ll be credited against your sentence. Maybe.”

“You _will_ do it. Or when I come back up here, you’ll discover that Ben Solo has even less mercy for you than Kylo Ren did.”

Hux just hung his head.

“Move it, _Allegiant General_ ,” Finn commanded. 

“Gotta watch him,” Ben told Dameron as Finn took Hux away. “Make sure a good engineer is looking over his shoulder while he’s on those tower controls.”

“Rose Tico is no fool. And she already has a history with Hux, so she knows what she’s dealing with.”

“Rose, huh? Rey talks about her all the time,” Ben said. “I’d like to meet her, after all this. And before you arrest me.”

Dameron looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. Suddenly he asked in a rush, “D’you wanna see Leia?”

What an odd question. It seemed to imply that his mother’s remains had not become one with the Force, something Luke would have surely taught her to prepare for during her training. 

_What are you up to, mother?_ he wondered.

“She’s in a hold one level down from here.” Dameron went on while Ben just stood there blinking like a dazed mynock. “ It’s not the safest place, or the most glamorous, but for now—”

“It’s exactly what she would have wanted,” Ben said without hesitation. “To be with her people, on this ship, at this moment.”

Dameron’s Force signature flooded with relief, and an image drifted to the surface of his mind: a cargo hold, transformed by Resistance members into a shrine of mementos and glow rods, messages and drawings taped or scrawled directly on the bulkheads, and at the center of it all, the bier where Leia Organa’s shrouded body rested. 

Still very much on this plane of existence.

Ben stretched out with his feelings, just barely brushing against the threads of the Force that had always, even during his darkest years, connected him to his mother. There _was_ something there; but Ben wasn’t ready to explore it. 

“So...do you wanna see her?” Dameron asked softly.

“Not yet,” Ben replied. “Thank you, for offering. Poe.”

Dameron looked thoughtful again, and he made some decision that Ben couldn’t quite see. Without warning he stepped forward and slowly, deliberately, put his arms around Ben. 

Ben stood motionless, his torso and arms encompassed, sort of, by the leader of the Resistance. 

“What is happening,” Ben asked.

“I...it felt like a huggable moment. No?”

“No.”

Dameron stepped away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay, that’s cool.”

* * *

Rey rode a stone lift down into the cold bowels of Exegol with the Knights of Ren at her back. She jumped off before it hit the ground, and six pairs of boots hit the ground right behind her. So close behind her that one of the knights landed squarely on her heel.

“Ushar, you bantha’s ass!” someone hissed.

“Forgive me, Lady Ren!” 

The sting of pain jostled the bond open. _I'm fine! I'm fine_ , she sent. It was so tempting to open it further, but Rey had no idea who or what Ben was dealing with up there, and she didn’t want to distract him. _Ushar stepped on my heel, that's all. Do these guys always walk so close?_

_You're with the knights?!_

It seemed like decades since she’d felt the hum of that rich baritone in her mind, next to her ear, against the throbbing flesh of her—

“Gah, giant jar of Snokes!” Rey shouted. Adrenaline ripped through her at the gruesome sight, and she quickly shuttered the bond.

“Beg your pardon, mistress?”

“Oh. I mean, hmph. I thought I already killed this conniving space slug.” In an instant her saber was in her hand and swinging through the tubes coupled to the tank. 

The thoughts of the knights projected at her before they could control them.

“Yes. The blade is blue. Deal with it,” she snapped.

_Young Kira…_

Rey gritted her teeth and locked her trembling knees.

_Do not be so hasty to destroy your inheritance, granddaughter. A Snoke or two will be useful when you are Empress. You will dispatch them to the far reaches of the galaxy to bend worthy Force-sensitives to your purposes. Just as I have done. Come, my dear. I have so many things to teach you..._

“The Emperor summons me,” Rey deadpanned to the knights. “Return to the surface and stay there until Lord Ren arrives.”

“As you command, Lady Ren.”

“Lady Ren,” she scoffed under her breath as the knights melted into the darkness. The title brought to mind a vision of herself on a jagged throne and a dream of a worshipful tongue sliding up her spine. Parallel realities that pressed closer to this one than Rey had understood.

She shook her head to clear out these thoughts. There was more than enough to deal with in this reality here and now. Rey deactivated her saber but kept it at the ready as she strode through a stone doorway and into a vast, cold chamber.

“Welcome home, Kira.”

The Emperor’s voice seeped out from within the deep cowl that concealed his wasted body, which was suspended on a life support structure in the center of the chamber. His words spread like putrid oil, coating Rey’s heart and crawling up the walls of the chamber to reach the rows upon rows of hooded figures who bore witness to Rey’s “homecoming.”

“This isn’t my home,” she proclaimed for all to hear. “And I’m not Kira.”

The support structure creaked and squealed as the Emperor maneuvered it toward her, his body jerking up and down and side to side with each whine of the servo-motors. He stopped under an opening in the ceiling high above the chamber that let in the light of the stars and the occasional flash of lightning from an approaching electrical storm. Now Rey could see his eyes—sickly yellow pupils behind a white film—and the rotten purple of his teeth and lips, which he drew back in a slow, mocking smile.

“So much cleverer than your bondmate,” Palpatine said. “His line was an amusing experiment in midichlorian manipulation. Oh, but Anakin didn’t tell him that, did he?” Palpatine’s smile widened, and Rey’s grip tightened on her saber. “I don’t think Anakin ever did figure it out himself. Not a scholar, that one. Not like your Ben.”

“Liar,” Rey spat, her rage triggered when she heard Ben’s name in _that_ voice.

The Emperor continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Of course, the most valuable result of the experiment took me by complete surprise. Science often works this way. You see, my dear _Rey_ , the Force elevated _you_ in answer to my creation. And now my creation has brought you to me.”

Rey held the bond closed tightly now. She didn’t want Ben to hear what the Emperor was implying about his bloodline, whether it was untrue or not. “You shouldn’t have been surprised,” she said to Palpatine. “The Force will always seek balance.” 

“Do not presume to lecture me about the Force, girl!” he snarled, all traces of the mad smile vanishing from his ravaged face. 

He was dangerous and powerful, Rey knew that. But as he ranted from high above her, Rey sensed the agony that wracked the Emperor’s body, the irregular, shallow rhythm of his heart, the slow decay of his Force signature. These machines would not sustain him much longer. 

Rey sensed something else, too: the shadowy figures that filled the room were just as likely to consume Sidious as they were to serve him.

If she and Ben could just stall him long enough, then perhaps this whole problem would take care of itself. But how to stall him?

“You think me weak,” Palpatine scoffed. “You have no idea how mistaken you are. This body is nothing more than a host for my power. Soon I will abandon it and inhabit a new vessel.”

They might not have to do anything at all. Apparently, even through his own death rattles, Darth Sidious liked to monologue.

“Ben Solo is a flawed vessel,” he ranted on. “I saw that he was truly unsalvageable when he came here seeking me out. Pity. I would have enjoyed being a young man again. And finally, a Skywalker with all his original limbs intact! 

“But he failed the final test,” Palpatine said, activating a control that lowered his body to hang at Rey’s eye level. “He failed to kill _you_. His attachment to you goes beyond the bond I forged between your minds. It goes beyond your dyad pairing in the Force. Oh yes, child, I know all about that. I can feel his shadow all around you, just as I feel your radiance burning through the cracks in his soul. These attachments do not concern me. They are of the Force and therefore, follow certain metaphysical rules. They can be controlled. 

“No, it is Ben Solo’s love for you that makes him unusable as my next host. _Love_ ,” he wheezed in disgust. “An attachment so irrationally human that he would renounce an entire galaxy for it, just like his mother, his uncle, and his grandfather before him. And that very irrationality is what makes him a liability I am not willing to risk.”

“I love him, too,” Rey declared. “So that’s two flawed vessels, I guess.”

Sidious cackled, and the sound was mimicked by all the Sith in the amphitheater. Their contempt pelted Rey from all sides like flecks of spittle. 

“Desert rat,” the Emperor sneered. “What you feel is not love. Do you not remember the mirror cave? I saw what you showed to Kylo Ren. I was there in his mind during your desperate fireside confessions. So lonely, so _needy_ that you displayed your tender underbelly and begged for scraps of comfort from your enemy. You are _pathetic_ , Rey of Jakku,” he sniffed. “You are not _equipped_ to love. You are only equipped to survive.”

Rey had walked through sandstorms that hadn’t rubbed her this raw, but she refused to bend in the face of Palpatine’s cruel words. “It took you years to break Ben Solo with such games. Do you really think you’re going to break _me_ with one conversation?” she scoffed.

“You may hide behind a mask of bravery, but you feel the truth of what I say.” Sidious closed his rheumy eyes. “And you cannot hide the darkness that is rising inside of you.” 

The Force tingled with the anticipation of all the Sith shades in the amphitheater above them. Sidious opened his eyes, and there was a weird glow to them that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. 

“Ignite your weapon, Rey of Jakku. Strike me down with all the despair and hatred you have for me and become my vessel. It is the only way for you to survive now.”

“Surviving isn’t enough for me anymore,” Rey said. “And I don’t hate you. I hate what you did to Ben Solo. It ends today.”

“Yes. It does end today. You see, I only need one more thing from _Ben Solo._ I need him to die,” Sidious sighed with a sick smile.

“That will _not_ happen,” Rey snarled. Her thumb hovered over her saber’s ignition switch.

 _Steady, Rey,_ came a whisper in the Force. It wasn’t Ben. Rey ignored it.

“Oh, Ben Solo _will_ die,” Sidious crooned. “I have foreseen it. And _you_ , poor child, will remain very much alive.”

 _I’ve always felt you with me_ , Ben had told her on Ahch-To. _Even before you were born._

Words that had brought her comfort now filled her with horror as the reality of what they meant crash-landed on top of her. 

“You understand, don’t you?” Sidious taunted her. “The threads of the Force that are shared between the dyad transcend what we call life and death,” he enunciated with sadistic clarity. “Your bondmate will still be with you, but the two of you will be trapped on opposite sides of a mirror, seeing but never touching.”

More voices wanted Rey’s attention now, calling from deep inside her: _Rey. Rey. Rey_. They were the voices of all the Jedi, who had never answered her summons before but came unbidden to stand with her now. All around her, the voices of the Sith began to chant her name too, drowning out the Jedi in a dizzying chorus of _Rey. Rey. Rey_. 

_Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey!_

_Rey. Rey. Rey._

_Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey._

_Rey._ _Rey. Rey._ _Rey._

 _Rey._ _Rey. Rey! Rey!_ _Rey!_

“Give yourself to me, Rey of Jakku,” Palpatine intoned through the rising din. “Be my vessel, and together we will bridge the World Between Worlds. We will find your parents. Finn’s parents. Your friend Rose’s sister. Think of all those who are alone like you. You can save them from that terrible fate.”

He was lying again, but he also wasn’t. Rey could feel it. What he spoke of was a real possibility, something that the Force could actually do...but he had no intention of doing it. He would promise anything to get her to comply, and then he would use her as he’d used Ben, as he’d used Anakin and Force knew how many others. He would use her to destroy the Resistance and all traces of hope in the galaxy. He would enslave billions. Darkness would cover every star system. And without Ben, Rey would be powerless to stop it.

_Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey!_

_Rey. Rey. Rey._

_Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey._

_Rey._ _Rey. Rey._ _Rey._

 _Rey._ _Rey. Rey! Rey!_ _Rey!_

**_Rey._ **

Ben had made planetfall.

His presence charged through the bond and sent that dark vision of the future slithering to the furthest corners of Rey’s imagination. She suddenly saw very clearly. She knew what she had to do.

“It is your destiny, Rey,” the Emperor pronounced. “There is nowhere else for you to go.”

Rey looked down at her lightsaber; she looked up at Darth Sidious. “You’re so right,” she said.

* * *

Ben put the shuttle down next to the _Hashoop_ and the _Night Buzzard_. An electrical storm filled the atmosphere with the smell of ozone and flashes of lightning, which illuminated the silhouettes of the ships that hung in the sky and glinted off the helmets of the knights who stood waiting outside the fortress. 

There was a storm building in the Force as well. There was no question who was to blame for it. 

“You let her go down there alone?” he asked without preamble as the knights fell in behind him and marched toward the lift.

“Let her?” Cardo huffed. “Does anyone _let_ her do anything?”

A smile spread across Ben’s face. 

The lift descended.

Halfway down, the Force snapped taut in warning. 

Lightning split the darkness and revealed a mouthful of fangs and a set of razor-sharp claws poised to slice the smile off of Ben’s face.

“Tuk'ata!” Cardo named their attacker as it landed in their midst and the stone slab listed heavily under the beast’s added weight.

“Just like that time on Moraband!” Ushar bellowed in delight. He brought his war club down between the spines along the Sith hound’s back, and the beast roared and lashed out with its whip-like tail, sending Vicrul, Ap’lek, and Kuruk tumbling over the edge of the lift.

“Darth Sidious is testing us!” Trudgen cackled somewhere off to Ben’s right. “We’ll show him we are worthy, won’t we, master? Master?”

Ordinarily Ben would have relished this brawl as much as the rest of the knights, but he had bigger Sith terrors to deal with today. He also didn’t have time to explain why his lightsaber was blue, so he didn’t even ignite it. 

“Join me in the throne room when you’ve finished here,” he commanded. He took a running leap off the stone slab and landed behind a second Tuk’ata that was stalking out of the shadows toward the three knights lying dazed on the ground.

“Hey!” Ben yelled. 

The beast turned its glowing red eyes on Ben and swiped almost lazily at his ankles. Ben dodged the attack, but the Tuk’ata’s claws snagged on the material of his cape. Ben quickly released the clasp, and the beast fell upon the fabric and began tearing it to shreds.

Bettie the closet droid was not going to be pleased.

“This one’s mine!” Vicrul roared.

The three knights were on their feet again and racing to be the first to take a crack at the distracted beast. Ben flicked them a salute with two fingers and left them to it.

As the snarls and shouts faded behind him, so did everything else: the standoff between the First Order and the Resistance up in the black; his own fear of the Sith Lord who had tormented him and his family for generations; Ben let it all go and strode directly into the Force storm that buffeted the Emperor’s throne room.

She was there waiting for him in the eye of that storm.

**_Rey._ **

That she stood facing Darth Sidious was no surprise. The sexy smuggler-assassin outfit she wore was unexpected, and Ben would definitely be asking Bettie to put in her regular rotation. But what made his heart feel like it was going to burst were the two braids that criss-crossed at the back of Rey’s head. 

Braids that vowed protection.

“You’re so right, Lord Sidious,” Rey’s voice cut through the howls of the Sith Eternal. “There’s nowhere I can go.”

She turned toward Ben, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. She didn’t let him feel her emotions, but her intention was clearer than if she had screamed it out loud.

 _Nothing can divide us, Ben. Remember that_. 

“Don’t,” he whispered. 

“There’s nowhere I can go that Ben Solo can’t find me,” Rey said. 

“Rey, don’t!”

Too late.

She ignited her saber and spun elegantly on one leg. The weapon, which until this moment had never tasted death, was already holstered again when the cauterized head of Sheev Palpatine rolled across the floor, lips drawn back in a grin that spasmed and twitched as Ben and Rey stared at it. They both knew exactly what that grin meant.

Victory.

Rey’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the floor. 

“Rey!” Ben lurched forward, but he’d barely taken a step when the Force stuttered and suddenly, he was no longer part of it. 

Ben was torn loose from the web of all things; neither dead nor alive; he no longer _existed_. 

Just as suddenly, he snapped back into place. Air rushed into his lungs and he gasped into existence again, but there wasn’t enough oxygen in the entire galaxy to fill the chasm inside him. His own heart has been ripped out of his chest, still beating but to no purpose, because the purpose was Rey and Rey...Rey was...

 _No. Trust her_. _She’s in there_. “Rey! I’m here, Rey!” Ben yelled over the ecstatic tempest of Dark Force that surged to smother every last trace of the Light. 

She pushed herself upright and sat staring at her hands until they stopped shaking. She struggled to stand, wobbling like a newborn fathier that had just discovered its own legs. Then she looked up at him. Her eyes were as big as moons.

“Ben?” she whispered.

Hope welled inside him, a fool’s emotion, but he’d forever be a fool when it came to her. “I’m here, sweetheart,” he whispered back. A vow. A promise.

The bond compressed as she staggered toward him, but it was sharp and slippery; Ben wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to grasp it right now. Even though he knew the physical gesture didn’t really help, he extended his hand to cautiously reach for Rey’s side of the connection _._

Rey’s next stumble brought her within reach of his straining fingertips. Not daring to blink, Ben simply nodded at her in encouragement. 

With a growl, Rey snatched up her blade and slashed it at him wildly. She would have taken half his arm if he hadn’t twisted out of the way. “What do you intend to do with that hand? Other than lose it?” she snarled.

Ben’s blood ran cold.

That cadence; that venom; they were all too familiar. So was the low, brittle laughter coming at him now. Ben knew that laugh. 

Still cackling with Rey’s hijacked voice, Darth Sidious sheathed her lightsaber over her shoulder again. “What a foolish girl you are,” he sneered. ( _So she is in there, then._ ) “You did not hate me, it’s true. But you did fear me. You feared what I would do to _him_. And fear works just as well as hatred for the essence transfer.”

The Jedi used essence transfer to give life. The Sith used essence transfer to take it.

“Fear not, young lovers,” Rey’s voice purred. “Now that I control the power of your dyad, I am in a position to ensure that you will never be parted again.”

Rey’s hands, hands that had touched Ben with acceptance and healing and love, now curled into wicked talons. Still processing the fact that his bondmate was possessed by a Sith Lord, Ben planted his feet and ignited his saber, ready for lightning or something worse.

“Your weapon will not help you, _boy_.” The saber was wrenched from his grip and sailed into the bottomless pit behind him. 

“We’re already underground. What could you possibly need a pit for?” Ben huffed.

“You will see. Or rather, you won’t,” Sidious said.

A mass of thorny tendrils of the Force began to unfurl from Rey’s hands. There was time to consider a defense, and there was time to realize that there was no defense against an attack that came from within the dyad itself. Ben’s feet left the floor and his body was torn from his control, suspended in a web of his own pain as Sidious reached into him with thousands of squirming, icy fingers and began to _take_.

Ben did what he’d done his whole life. He fought. 

He fought despite the mask of hatred that twisted Rey’s face. He fought despite the very real possibility that this fight had been lost long before he was born. He made Sidious struggle for every piece of him, every heartbeat, every midichlorian, every scream. 

The more Sidious took, the less Ben could feel his connection to the Force. The only threads of it he could find were the unraveling strings of the bond.

 _Rey_ , he sent across the most important connection he’d ever made. _Rey, please._

“It is useless to resist,” Sidious growled. 

The Sith Eternal poured down over the tiered chamber and swarmed across the floor. Half drained of life, Ben could do nothing as the shadows of every Sith who had ever lived slammed him down onto the stones. He didn’t know if it was their shades that stole all the warmth from his body, or if the cold was a symptom of his own approaching death.

Only, Ben didn’t die.

“You can’t do it,” he said on a rusty gasp. “A dyad can’t survive in one body. Take all of me and you’ll kill your host.”

Sidious released him with a hiss. “No matter! I have taken all I need from you and your miserable family. You come from slaves and pirates. Your only claims to nobility are through elections and adoption. It was _I_ who elevated the Skywalkers and gave you opportunities for power and greatness, which you all squandered at every turn. You are _worthless_ , Ben Solo. Die or do not die, I no longer care. You have nothing more that I want.”

Hearing these things from Rey’s lips hurt more than having the life sucked out of him, but Ben shoved his devastation aside and pushed himself to his feet. “The hell I don’t,” he said to Rey’s retreating back.

 _Careful, Ben,_ came a whisper in the Force. It wasn’t Rey. Ben ignored it.

Sidious turned Rey’s body around. He made her take a step back toward Ben; a shaft of starlight from above ignited the yellow fire that had burned away all the hazel in Rey’s eyes. 

“What do you know of hell, young Skywalker?” Sidious asked. “You think what Snoke did to you was hell? You would be mistaken.” The smile he forced onto Rey’s face was almost sweet. “I will show you hell,” he said.

The bond tore open like a fresh wound, and Sidious used that sacred, intimate pathway to worm deeper into Ben’s mind than he ever had before. Desperately, Ben reached for the Force to close off his end, but Sidious had drained him too far. He was flayed open, completely vulnerable to whatever the Sith would send through.

A river of fire poured out across Ben’s vision. On the scorched shore of the river, a Jedi stood over a smouldering pile of charred remains.

 _Look closer_ , Sidious’ true voice commanded. Against his will, Ben was dragged to the rocky shoreline. He closed his eyes, but that did nothing to shield him from seeing that the Jedi’s dismembered adversary was Anakin Skywalker. And that Anakin was still alive.

Ben’s screams were swallowed by the roar of lava, choked by the noxious air of Mustafar.

“That is the work of your namesake Kenobi, the great Jedi negotiator,” Sidious said. “See how he _negotiated_ with your grandfather. And yet you still cling to the Light like a child who fears the monster under his bed. Such a fool! The real monsters have always been right in front of you!” 

Ben was falling, falling, falling until he landed on his sleeping mat in his hut at the Jedi academy. Luke loomed over him, disfigured by the sickly green light of the saber he was about to use to murder his own nephew. 

Ben called to the lightsaber on his work table, but the Force was not with him anymore. Just as Luke’s blade swung down, Ben was yanked out of that memory and hurled onto the terrace of his childhood home on Chandrila, his toddler hands grasping at the sky as the fastest ship in the galaxy took his father far, far away. A nanny droid wrangling him back inside, where his mother was already on her way out the door.

“Mama!”

“Don’t worry, starlight, I didn’t forget our play date,” she said without looking up from her datapad. “I’ll come back for you in a little while. I promise.” The last word was still echoing in the apartment when the door slid closed behind her.

_And then there is the hell that Rey will experience when I end your life and she is trapped here with me. It could be decades, perhaps centuries before I exhaust all she has to give me. When her body does fail, there will be precious little left to return to the Force._

_But you can still save her from that life of loneliness, Ben._

Sidious pulled out of the bond and left Ben alone in his own mind, curled up on the floor, hollowed out and disoriented. From Rey’s belt, he drew the dagger she’d unearthed on Pasaana. Sidious shrugged off Rey’s leather jacket, lightsaber clattering against the floor, and hiked up the sleeve of her right arm. 

Even though Ben knew what came next, he still cried out when Sidious carved a shallow gash from the inside of Rey’s elbow to her wrist. Blood welled to the surface; the wound burned distantly in what was left of the bond. 

Looking down Rey’s nose, Sidious offered Ben the hilt of the dagger. “Bind yourself to me, Ben Solo. Pact with me in blood, and you will rule side by side with your Empress.”

Ben searched Rey’s face, her sneering mouth and her furrowed brow, and he didn’t see _Rey_ anymore. He didn’t _feel_ her anymore. If she _was_ still in there, he couldn’t reach her. And she couldn’t reach him. 

He thought about all the years of his life with those dark voices in his head, all of them belonging to the Sith Lord who now possessed Rey’s body. Sidious had never possessed Ben, not completely. Ben had always had a choice in everything he did. Rey wouldn’t even have that. She wouldn’t be able to fight. She would only be able to watch. A tool. A prisoner. A slave.

Ben swallowed thickly and accepted the dagger. With the last of his energy, he rose to his feet.

“Good, good,” Sidious praised him. 

Ben didn’t hear Rey in that voice anymore.

He pressed the dagger to the inside of his own elbow and opened the flesh along his forearm. The pain was nothing compared to the agony of the choice he had just made.

“Do it,” Sidious snapped impatiently as Ben’s tears dripped to the floor along with the blood from both their wounds. Sidious raised Rey’s arm for Ben to clasp. “Let go of the family that rejected you, renounce the Light that weakens you, and become who you were always meant to be!”

They clasped arms. Ben didn’t try to hide his disgust or his despair when the contact brought him no hint of Rey or the bond. Nor did he look down to witness the mingling of their blood as Sidious was doing. As Ben had known he would do. 

It was the moment of distraction Ben needed, and he didn’t hesitate. He flipped the dagger to a backhand grip and plunged it deep into the heart of his enemy.

“I’m exactly who I’m meant to be,” he said. “Skywalker. Naberrie. Organa. Solo. I’m all of them. And now, I am free. And so is she.”

He wrenched the dagger out of Rey’s chest and flung it away.

“No!” Sidious screamed. Not in pain, but in defeat.

There had been no fear, no hatred, no darkness of any kind in Ben’s heart when he drove that dagger home. Only compassion for the woman he loved. Without surrender to the Dark Side, Sidious could not transfer himself into Ben. He was trapped in the body he’d stolen, and that body was dying. 

_Rey_ was dying. 

But Ben could fix that.

Sidious slid to the floor, dragging Ben down with him. Ben ignored the hands that clawed weakly at his face, the zaps of Force lightning that fizzled around him, the last barbs that Sidious hurled into his mind, too dull to take root. 

He ignored the shrieks and moans of the Sith Eternal, who raged all around in a maelstrom of shadows, hungry for the essence of their master. He ignored the Jedi spirits who hovered in silence at the edges of the chamber, waiting to claim their share of Darth Sidious and bring it to justice.

Ben ignored all of that and focused only on _her_ eyes.

 _Be with me_ , he prayed. He gathered what little influence he still had on the Force and dedicated it to this prayer. That the murky yellow would drain from her irises. That she hadn’t gone somewhere he couldn’t find her. That he would find the strength to heal her. _Be with me, Rey. Please._

It wasn’t enough.

“Fool,” Sidious gasped, blood spurting from Rey’s lips, which were turning blue. “She is beyond your reach now. Soon, all you will have is her ghost.”

A lifetime without her touch. Without her kisses. Without her warmth. It was what he deserved after all he’d done. A lifetime of solitude. A lifetime alone.

“You’re not alone.” 

Ben lifted his head and stared in shock. “Uncle Luke?” he whispered.

There he stood, not the specter that had haunted Ben’s dreams but the uncle who had taken him in and raised him like his own son.

“Hey, kiddo,” Luke said with one of his wry smiles. “We thought you might be ready for some backup.” 

Next to Luke stood Anakin Skywalker, his face solemn and determined. “Yeah, and there’s a bunch of us who are more than ready to put an end to this twisted, evil son of a—oh. Master Yoda. Master Obi-Wan.”

“Hello there,” Kenobi said as he and Yoda materialized at Anakin’s side.

All around Ben, more Jedi burned paths through the shadows of the Sith Eternal to form a circle of blue light around him; some he recognized from holocrons, and others from his own past: Qui-Gon Jinn, Mace Windu. Voe and Tai and Hennix.

“We’re gonna solve this one together, okay Ben?” Hennix said.

“The Sith will rise again!” Sidious rasped on through the throes of death. “And the last Jedi will die with me. You are too late to save her, and you are too late to save Ben Solo!”

“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Tai said.

Tai and all the other Jedi closed their eyes. The Force grew brighter and brighter around Ben until it was nearly pure white.

 _Be with us_ , they called to him.

Ben closed his eyes and opened himself completely to the Light. 

_That’s it, Ben. Feel the Force flowing through you._

_It surrounds us and penetrates us._

_Life creates it. Makes it grow._

_These are your first steps, Ben._

“I am one with the Force,” Ben whispered. “The Force is with me.”

_You’ve got this, kiddo._

_Almost there, Ben._

_Luminous beings are we. Not this crude flesh._

The Force rekindled inside Ben and rushed through his body and his mind, through all his connections to the universe, and through the most important connection he’d ever made. 

Ben opened his eyes and caught a flicker of hazel, just a flicker, but it was enough. It was a miracle.

 _Hold onto me_ , Rey’s voice, her true voice, whispered into the bond.

_With everything I’ve got, sweetheart._

Ben centered himself in the Force; he’d never felt so attuned to it. He was in harmony with both the Living and the Cosmic Force when he reached through the bond and _pulled._ He pulled until Rey’s entire essence, radiant and beautiful and strong, was safely intertwined with his; they were sharing one body and one mind; she was thinking his thoughts; his heart was pumping her blood.

 _Together_.

“ _Sky...walker!_ ” Sidious cursed. It was the last word he ever spoke.

Through Ben’s eyes, the dyad watched the Jedi and the Sith descend on the essence of Darth Sidious in a feeding frenzy of Dark and Light energies. The last Sith Lord was torn apart and carried away to the four corners of the Force, never to find his way back to this plane again. 

The Force itself breathed a long, heavy sigh; when it faded, the chamber resounded with a thunderous silence.

The Sith, and the Jedi, were gone from the galaxy. Balance had returned. For a day or for an age, it would be up to Ben and Rey and all living beings to decide how long it lasted.

 _We did it_ , Rey said for them both. 

Ben smiled and opened his eyes.

Staring back at him were the empty hazel eyes of a corpse.

In Ben’s determination to keep her safe, he’d held on to her for too long. There was nothing left to heal. No flame to rekindle. 

_Ben…_

“No,” he whispered. That’s not... _NO!_ ”

_Ben, cyare, listen to me._

It was impossible that her spirit could feel so alive inside him when her body was lying dead in his arms. 

“I should have found another way,” he whispered. Rey was the strongest person he knew. He should have believed in her, given her time to fight Sidious herself. He should have been able to free her without _killing_ her!

_You did the right thing, Ben. You saved the galaxy. And you saved me from destroying it._

A sob caught in his throat; her heartbeat, a sound he couldn’t live without, was not coming from her body; it was an echo that only existed inside his own chest. 

She was leaving.

 _If I stay, we’ll both die_ , she said what he already knew.

“Stay,” he begged her anyway.

 _Live_ , she begged him back.

The warmth of her breath against his jaw made no sense. Her body was cold in his arms; her lungs were empty.

 _I didn’t understand before, but I do now. I’m here, Ben,_ Rey said. The last threads that tethered her to him slipped loose, their light already fading from the galaxy. _I will always be with you._

“Yeah, no. Fuck that,” Ben said.

He hoisted Rey’s body, and she flopped around like a giant tooka doll until he had her cradled close to his chest. He laid his hand over the torn, blood-soaked fabric and flesh above her heart.

A hand that wasn’t Rey’s settled on his shoulder. “It’s too late, Ben,” Luke said gently. “You’ll die too if you try.”

“There is no try,” Ben said. He closed his eyes and _breathed._

* * *

In the World Between Worlds, a figure approaches the dyad. Human in form, slight but powerful of build with tawny skin and black hair that flows below its waist, except for a topknot and a pair of thin braids behind its ear. This person might be male or female. They have one brown eye and one blue. Their Force signature is a dazzling tapestry of sunlight and thunderclouds.

 _The Prime Jedi_ , the dyad realizes.

The Prime Jedi does not speak. The reason for their presence is obvious. The World Between Worlds is not a place to dwell but a place to pass through on the way to the next place. The Prime Jedi is here to guide the dyad on that journey.

 _We are ready_ , the dyad decides.

“Ben! Rey!”

Old names, spoken by a voice the dyad knows. It calls from a chaotic, corporeal world, from a life that has run its course. 

The Prime Jedi stands before the dyad with the patience of all those who live outside time. They seem to listen to the voice.

 _We are ready_ , the dyad repeats. Patience has never been this dyad’s forte.

“Hold it right there!”

It is the same voice again. The voice of a human woman. She appears beside the dyad, glimmering brokenly in the Force, as though she is stretched across too many worlds.

“Snap out of it,” the woman barks. She does an outrageous thing and sticks her hand straight through the middle of the dyad.

“Leia?” half of the dyad says.

“Mother?” the other half says.

“Good, I’ve got your attention. Now listen up,” Leia-Mother says. “I had to pull some serious cosmic strings, but apparently that’s the only way to get things done around here.” She takes a breath, though there is no need for such in the World Between Worlds. “The point is, I’m taking you back.”

“Back?” the dyad asks.

The Prime Jedi is levitating, fingers steepled under their chin as they watched all of this with great amusement.

“Yes, back!” the woman exclaims. She seems to think the dyad is being ungrateful. “Back to the life you never really got to live. You still can. Both of you.”

Both? That’s right; Ben and Rey are two distinct beings. How unnatural.

Behind the Prime Jedi, a portal opens. On the other side stand two more humans the dyad has known. Anakin, Luke, their names are. These beings and countless others have fought for Rey and Ben. Fought so they could survive.

 _Not survive_ , the dyad remembers. _They fought so we could live._

Behind the dyad, another portal opens. Leia-Mother folds her hands in front of her. “It’s your choice, of course,” she says. 

There are no masks in the World Between Worlds. Leia-Mother’s hope outshines the veneer of neutrality she is attempting to affect.

It is her hope that makes this unexpected choice a simple one for the dyad.

The Prime Jedi doesn’t smile, but they don’t not smile either. They simply lift their hands and _push_.

* * *

“Whaddaya mean, her body disappeared?” Poe shouted into his commlink.

All the Resistance high command swiveled in their chairs to stare at him. So did all the members of the First Order’s Supreme Council, looped in via holovid from the _Steadfast_. 

“Lieutenant Mitaka,” Connix said loudly to the image of her First Order counterpart while shooting laser cannons at Poe with her eyes. “Perhaps you could read back that last proviso, which is the final detail to hammer out in these very lengthy and delicate terms of surrender?” she finished under her breath, surely for Poe’s benefit.

— _what the krf is going on?!?_ an angry text from Rose fired across Poe’s datapad while Mitaka dutifully read the last section of the terms.

— _Snap swears L’s body just disappeared in front of his_ 👀

— _bantha_ 💩, Rose texted back. _he and the other flyboys hittin the jet juice all day. I’ll check the sec holos. gimme 2mins_

“Thank you, Lieutenant Mitaka,” Aftab Agbar was saying. “If everyone is in agreement—”

“Yes. We are all in _agreement_ ,” First Order Admiral Frantis Griss cut Agbar off the way he’d been cutting off every non-human on the Resistance side of the negotiation table all night.

“Great! Then we’re ready to sign! I’ll go first,” Finn said.

“You would,” Hux muttered.

“How about we all sign at the same time?” Poe suggested magnanimously.

“Nobody is signing a damn thing!” Snap Wexley roared as he barreled into the supposedly closed door negotiations and slammed his fist on the table. “Not until you First Order sleemos return General Organa’s body!”

“I beg your pardon!” General Engell huffed from the _Steadfast._

A cacophony of First Order and Resistance voices exploded all around the room. 

“General Organa is dead?”

“They took Leia?”

“Hux, anything you’d like to tell us?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Finn muttered close to Poe’s ear.

Poe’s datapad beeped. 

— _sec holos inconclusive. L is there, then she isn’t_ 🤯 

Across the table, Rose shrugged helplessly.

General Dameron, what is the meaning of this?” Admiral Friss demanded.

Everyone turned to stare at Poe.

“I’ll tell you what it means,” Snap answered before he could think of a response. “It means give us back our princess or you’re all gonna get _spaced_!”

* * *

Ben gasped and sat up too quickly. His skull pressed in on his brain; his entire body felt way too confining. At the same time, it felt like half of him was empty.

“Rey,” he breathed.

She lay on the ground, just as Ben had been a moment before. He didn’t remember passing out during the healing meditation. He pulled Rey back into his arms and nearly passed out again in relief when he felt unbroken skin and a strong, steady heartbeat beneath his hand.

Alive.

She was unconscious. Ben reached for the bond; the moment he touched it, the Force flowed smooth and warm between them, and his sensation of confinement and emptiness faded.

_Rise and shine, sweetheart. It’s another beautiful day on Exegol. At least, I think it’s another day. Might be the same day. I’m really not sure._

Her mind stirred in response, and Ben withdrew to let her finish waking on her own. 

And there it was again: that longing for _closer_ , for _together_ , for _oneness_. Ben had a memory of existing effortlessly in that state, but he couldn’t remember how they’d achieved it, or when. 

He did remember Luke’s warning. _You’ll die too if you try._

Rey’s slim, calloused fingers brushed against the hand Ben still held over her heart, coaxing him out of his reverie; his own heart did a full backflip when he looked down and saw her hazel eyes twinkling up at him.

“You healed me,” Rey whispered.

Did he? “I...I think I had some help,” he said.

“I’m glad you didn’t have to do it alone.” 

She was tentative when she put her hands on his face, as though she were touching it for the first time. Ben held still during her explorations and was rewarded with a kiss that wasn’t tentative at all.

When their lips parted, Rey frowned at her torn, bloody shirt. “You might have avoided the _couture_ ,” she said as she grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Bettie is not going to be pleased.”

A tremor in the Force drew their attention to the swath of pre-dawn sky above and the Final Order fleet that still hovered in the atmosphere. A squadron of TIEs screeched past, dogged by some battered but dangerous X-wings. 

“I should’ve known better than to leave Poe Dameron in charge of diplomacy,” Ben muttered.

“He’s a difficult man,” Rey said.

“Lucky for him you like difficult men.”

“Lucky for both of you.”

“Touché. Well,” Ben said, cracking his knuckles and making some quick calculations in his head. “Looks like we’re gonna have to cripple a fleet.” 

“Cripple it?” Rey asked. “I thought we were giving it to the Resistance.”

Ben trailed his hand over the braids at the back of her head. “Every one of those Final Order ships has the firepower of a Death Star,” he said. “My mother wouldn’t have wanted anyone to have that, not even the Resistance. Or the New-New Republic. They’re still working on the name,” he shrugged.

Rey crooked her finger at him. “Come here,” she said.

Ben obeyed, leaning down into kissing range. _I love you, you difficult, wonderful man_ , she sent as her mouth slanted over his. 

_And I love you, you impossible, precious woman._

Their lips were still locked when they each stretched a hand toward the sky. Instead of playing tug-of-war over one transport like they had on Pasaana, Ben and Rey used the full power of the dyad to crush the primary weapon on every star destroyer in the Final Order fleet.

“Oh, by the way,” Ben said when his mouth was available again, “I think my mother would have wanted us to name the catamaran the _Hashoop_. She had a soft spot for Ewok culture, you see. I was actually conceived on Endor during one of her visits to commemorate the—”

“Nice try, Solo. We’re calling it the _Porg’s Nest_.”

“—no you didn’t, Cardo! It was Vicrul who eviscerated the second beast!” 

The Knights of Ren limped into the throne room, dragging the carcasses of the two Sith hounds by their tails. “That makes it his kill and his trophy to the Emperor,” Ap’lek concluded his argument. 

“Vicrul wouldn’t have been able to eviscerate it if I hadn’t hit it first with two concussion grenades,” Cardo argued back.

“Our master will settle this,” Ushar cut in. “What say you, Kylo Ren?”

“Lord Ren, Lady Ren. Where is the Emperor?” Vicrul asked.

Ben turned back to Rey. “Lady Ren?” he mouthed silently.

Rey winked, then cleared her throat and stepped around him to address the knights. “Palpatine was weak and foolish, so we destroyed him,” she declared haughtily. 

_No more masters_ , she sent to Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. Epilogue will be posted soon!


	11. Balance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, the epilogue.

Maz Kanata took a break from her liquor inventory and told Chewbacca to do the same. They went upstairs together and stepped out onto the terrace overlooking Nymeve Lake, where the Takodana evening air was just as muggy as the air inside the nearly-rebuilt castle, but at least there was a bit of a breeze blowing in off the water.

“I hope this grand reopening draws the crowd Lando thinks it will,” Maz said to her Wookiee companion. “Otherwise you and I are gonna have a lotta booze to drink, old friend.”

Chewbacca gave a happy bark at the prospect and waved an arm toward the lights on the other side of the lake.

“Those two? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them finish a bottle of Ebla beer between them.”

An exception had been the day they’d arrived on her doorstep, exhausted and filthy but exuberant. Their eyes had told Maz everything she needed to know, but she’d ushered them into the only undamaged tower of the castle and listened as their incredible tale tumbled out between forkfuls of nerf stew and pitcher after pitcher of water (they’d been so dehydrated, poor dears). 

Once their bellies were full and they’d run out of words, Maz had popped the cork on a bottle of chilled Lothalian currant wine. “There’s an old cabin in the forest, just across the lake there,” she told them as she poured three glasses of the bubbly, dark purple liquid. “Been abandoned for decades. Probably full of spiders. Anyway, it’s yours for as long as you like.”

“You...you’d let us stay?”

 _You’d let_ me _stay?_ is what Ben Solo had really meant to ask. 

As if Maz would turn her back on Han and Leia’s son, who used to nick pastries from her kitchen and chase butterflies on their meandering paths among the trees.

“We would really appreciate that,” Rey said. It didn’t escape Maz’s notice that the girl spoke for both of them, nor the fact that the two hadn’t stopped holding hands since they’d walked off their ship.

“I’m way too old to hold a grudge,” Maz had said, pouring more wine for all of them. “Now that my trade disputes are settled and the war is ending, I’ll start to rebuild. It’s hardly the first time someone’s blown up my castle. It’s not even the first time _this_ young man has blown up my castle!”

Before Rey could ask Maz to tell that story, Ben blurted out, “We’ll rebuild it. We’ll help you reopen the castle, the bar, the whole business. In exchange for the cabin.”

“Don’t insult me,” Maz had waved him off. “You don’t owe me a thing, _ad’ika_.”

“It’s a good trade,” Rey said. “And, well...we both need a job.”

“A Force dyad doing construction work? It’s a little below your paygrade. But I could certainly use the help.”

Before sending them off for a bath and a good night’s sleep, Maz had given them the small chest where she’d once kept the Skywalker lightsaber. She told them the story of how she’d acquired the famous blade, and they told her how they’d recovered it from a pit on Exegol. 

Then Maz had watched, completely enthralled, as Rey explained to Ben what the saber had shown her when she’d touched it for the first time, using a language of half-spoken sentences, silent glances, and light brushes of her thumb across the back of his hand. Maz was no Jedi, but she could feel the Force arcing back and forth between the two young people, and it hadn’t surprised her at all when Ben conveyed his questions and reactions in quiet hums and the slightest twitches of his currant-stained lips.

In her thousand years, Maz had never witnessed anything like it.

Ben had placed the saber in the wooden box, and Rey had placed a second saber beside it. Maz hadn’t asked how they’d found Leia’s weapon. There would be plenty of nights for storytelling, and that story would pair better with the bottle of Toniray that Maz had been saving in one of her vaults.

Chewbacca purred a question that brought Maz back to the present and to the cabin lights visible through the trees on the far side of the lake. “Just thinking about our lovebirds and how long it might be before they pick up their sabers again for a bit of sparring,” she answered.

They were probably too tired and too busy, the Wookiee speculated in a series of sympathetic wumphs. He’d only arrived a few days ago himself, and he’d been impressed by what the two saplings had accomplished in the six months they’d been here.

“Yes, and they spend every moment they're not working on the castle fixing up their own home,” Maz agreed.

A cry of passion echoed out from the distant shoreline, followed by a surge in the Force that sped across the lake and dumped a refreshing tsunami on Maz and Chewbacca’s heads.

“Well. Not every moment,” Maz chuckled.

* * *

It was summer on Takodana, and the forest was as humid as a happabore’s asshole. Rey didn’t fault Ben for walking around without a shirt on most of the time, even while he was finishing a weld on the aircon unit Rey had salvaged from one of the wrecks that still languished in the shipyard by Maz’s castle. 

Although, Rey was starting to suspect the shirtlessness was not entirely for the sake of staying cool. 

“Try it now,” Ben called to her from outside. 

Rey tapped the control panel she’d rigged on the wall of their bedroom and sighed in relief when cold air began flowing through the duct Ben had installed. She poked her head out the window to give him the thumbs up. “It’s working! We’re saved!” 

“Astral.” Ben pushed his safety goggles back and wiped away some sweat with a black bandana he wore tied to his wrist. He grinned rakishly when he noticed Rey’s attention had wandered to his bare chest. “My eyes are up here, sweetheart,” he teased.

Double vision: _Rey sees Ben grab the windowsill and vault upward to steal a sweaty kiss. She sees herself call on the Force and drag him all the way into the bedroom. She... doesn’t need the Force to see what happens next._

Even after they got the aircon working, they still camped out most nights on the shore where the air was naturally cooler. They would lie beneath the stars on the dyad blanket they’d retrieved from Ahch-To, serenaded by the tranquil croaking of the flurrgs, Maz’s castle twinkling with newly installed lights on the other side of Nymeve Lake.

Ben told Rey about another lake, on a planet called Naboo, where he’d gone with his parents once to meet some long-lost relatives. He and Rey were going to spend next summer there. Takodana in the summer was something this dyad would prefer not to face again.

“Comfortable?” Ben murmured against the back of her neck.

Rey settled her chin on her forearms and showed him through the bond just how comfortable she was, lying naked in the cool breeze while he straddled her hips and worked all the knots out of her muscles. “Do we have any more muja fruit?” she prompted him.

“Of course, my lady.” One of Ben’s massive hands left off massaging her shoulder so he could call a slice of the juicy muja from their supply. Rather than float it toward her with the Force as he’d been doing up until now, he stretched long and low over her body and curled his hand around to press the fruit past her lips with his fingers. 

The bond activated all along the bare skin of Rey’s back and Ben’s torso, reminding them that it had been over an hour since they’d joined their bodies together.

“Do you think that will ever stop?” Rey snorted as Ben rolled her over. He dipped his head and sucked the muja juice from her tongue, one sticky hand kneading her breast before giving her nipple an affectionate tweak and trailing down to cup her entrance.

“I hope not,” he said.

* * *

It was just past midday when Poe walked into the Takodana forest and found Ben Solo eating a muja fruit, leaning against a post on the unfinished porch of a ramshackle cabin. He was barefoot, and his pants were rolled up to his knees, Corellian bloodstripes just visible beneath a layer of grime and grass stains. Other than the Force, he was unarmed. He was also shirtless. 

“Hey, Dameron,” this feral forest-dweller drawled in greeting.

“Hey, Ben,” Poe started slow and easy. He did a quick visual check of the clearing and was relieved that Rey didn’t seem to be around. That was better for everyone involved, really. “Listen. Ben. Everyone's real grateful for what you did on Exegol, what you and Rey both did…”

Ben slurped the last of the muja and tossed the pit into the trees. He licked the pulp from his fingers. He stared at Poe expectantly. 

“Look, Solo, are you gonna make me say it?” Poe didn’t like how whiny that came out, so he cleared his throat. “Don't make this harder than it has to be. We've got a couple of ysalamiri on the ship, but—”

“You do?” Ben asked. Poe held his ground as Leia’s son pushed away from the post and descended the cabin steps. “Ah. You do. I can feel the void they produce in the Force. That's fascinating.”

“So you understand we're taking you in,” Poe said. 

“I understand nothing of the sort,” Ben replied as casually as if Poe were a neighbor who’d stopped by for a chat and a cup of caf.

“This is happening, Ben. I’ve got troops on board who are ready to bring those lizards out here if you resist.”

“That’s your plan?” the most powerful Force user in the galaxy deadpanned.

“You won’t be able to kill them,” Poe warned him. “They blank out the Force or whatever for like a 20 meter radius.”

“True. But they are still vulnerable to the elements.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ll just burn down the whole section of forest next to your ship and cook your lizards _and_ your troops,” Ben said. He lifted his hand and narrowed his eyes.

“He’s joking! He’s just joking,” Rey called from the roof. “Hi, Poe.”

She leaped smoothly to the ground and jogged over to Ben, who lowered his hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Rey’s ear. “Okay, sweetheart, but now we’ll never know how many ways Beex can prepare roast ysalamiri,” he said. 

“We’ve got plenty of food,” Rey shrugged, which was surprising to Poe because Rey _never_ thought there was enough food. She thrust a grey tee shirt at Ben. “Besides, we don't need the Force to stop Poe from arresting you. We have something much scarier.”

“POE DAMERON!”

“Kriff,” Poe sighed.

* * *

Ben smirked as Chewie set Maz on the ground and she proceeded to tell Poe Dameron in many colorful ways to get spaced. 

While she did so, Ben donned the tee shirt Rey had brought down, one of the promotionals she’d asked Lando to print for the grand reopening of Maz’s in a few weeks. The front pocket bore the face of the spunky proprietress and the words **Welcome back to Maz’s!** On the back in much larger Aurebesh glyphs, the shirt read: **DON’T STARE AT ANY OF IT**.

“That boy just saved you and everyone else and you’ll not take one step closer to him or Force help me every curl on your head is going to have curls of its own from the thrashing I will bring down upon you, Poe Dameron!”

Maz finally took a breath, and Dameron charged through the opening she left him. “Maz, there’s a whole galaxy out there demanding justice! Kylo Ren—”

“—died on Kef Bir,” Rey said. “I killed him myself.”

“I mean…” Poe glanced at Ben pointedly.

“I saw it.”

“Finn!” Rey dashed to her friend and nearly knocked him off the footpath with an enthusiastic hug. Her joy spread from Ben’s heart to the grin on his face.

“I saw Rey kill Kylo Ren,” Finn stated when he was able to set Rey down on the ground. “She ran him through with his own lightsaber and stole his TIE fighter. It was bad ass.”

“Finn, buddy, what the hell are you doing?” 

While Dameron accused his co-general of planning to sabotage this mission from the very start, the former stormtrooper gave Ben a wink over Rey’s shoulder. 

That was how Ben discovered that he’d made a friend. 

Rey was herding Finn over to join the rest of them now while he outlined his plans for deprogramming the liberated stormtroopers. “Jannah and her crew are already starting to get things moving. It’s going to be a huge job,” Finn was saying.

“A job that would go a hell of a lot faster if the former Supreme Leader got involved,” Dameron grumbled. “That could knock some years off of your sentence. Maybe you’d even avoid prison entirely.”

“And Rose is rallying the outer systems to participate in the design of the new government,” Finn continued without acknowledging Dameron’s interruption. “One that works for all worlds, not just the ones in the Core. Lando’s been meeting with trade federations and pirate guilds, trying to bring them into the process, too.”

“That’s an overwhelming project right there. Something the long lost Prince of Alderaan or the son of the galaxy’s most beloved smuggler could lend his name to,” Poe said. “And then there’s all the Force sensitives out there like Finn who need guidance and training. Don’t you think you have a responsibility to—”

A Wookiee roar nearly split all the human eardrums in the clearing. 

“Couldn’t’ve said it better myself!” Maz nodded. “Rey _and_ Ben have done their part. They’ve restored balance to the Force and given the galaxy as level a playing field as it’s ever gonna get. Now it’s time for the rest of us to do our part. These two can join back in whenever they’re ready and however they decide is right for them. Or not. It’s their choice.”

A moan from Chewbacca made Maz chuckle. “Well maybe I did say it better myself, after all.”

“You certainly said it with less swearing,” Ben remarked, earning an affectionate shove from his uncle.

“But…” Dameron protested. “I just thought... I mean, all of this is gonna be so much _work_. And you guys are… the power you have... You could make it all so much… I dunno, _easier_?”

“Have you not learned a damn thing from any of what’s happened? _That is not how the Force works!_ ” Maz exploded. “Now march your butt up to that castle and have a drink with me. Two drinks. Then maybe you’ll be ready to face all of the _hard work_ that lies ahead.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how alcohol works,” Rey said. 

“It is not,” Ben agreed. 

A shadow from Rey’s past _they sold you for drinking money_ slipped between them, and Ben bent to nuzzle her freckled cheek until the shadow melted into the deeper darkness of the forest.

“Oi!” Rey hollered into her commlink, way too loud for how close Ben’s ear was to her face. “Just because I’m not on the job site doesn’t mean I don’t see you, Cardie. Be careful with that stone, it’s not native to this planet and we haven’t got any to spare!”

“Sorry, Mistress Rey!” Cardo Ren’s fearful voice sputtered through the device.

“I told you, it’s just Rey,” she muttered under her breath, ending the comm.

Ben dug his hand into his pocket to fuss with the ring Lando had dropped off a few days ago. Ben already knew how he was going to ask her. He’d practiced his delivery. The names they’d use didn’t matter to him in the slightest, but he would spend the rest of his life reminding his wife that she wasn’t “just Rey” to him or to anyone else. 

He was quite sure she would take his hand this time. He didn’t care what came next. If he was with her, he was on the right path.

 _Let’s join them for a bit before we get back to the knights?_ Rey sent. _Lando shipped some more of that Endoran caf you like so much_. 

Ben quickly walled up his thoughts about what he was planning, and Rey withdrew without question. They were always careful to give each other privacy. “In a minute,” he replied. “Dameron, can we talk to you for a second?”

The pilot was already halfway up the path out of the clearing with Chewie, Maz, and Finn, but they all turned to look back. Maz acknowledged Ben’s meaningful gaze, and she scurried nimbly up Chewie’s arm to alight on his furry shoulder. 

“Come on, let’s give these three a minute alone,” she said. 

“Well, what is it?” Dameron huffed as the others departed. “Did you wanna gloat in private about what just happened here?”

“You’re still angry with me,” Ben acknowledged.

“On about twelve different levels, buddy.”

“You’re angry with me for interrogating you on the _Finalizer._ ”

“Yeah, that’s one of the deeper levels.”

“I’m not going to apologize,” Ben told him. “We were at war. You had information that I needed.”

Dameron scowled. “This is not making me less angry, if that’s what you were aiming for.”

_Ben…?_

“I want to give you something,” Ben said. “It won’t make up for the pain I caused you, but it might alleviate another kind of pain.”

“Why do you Force types always talk in riddles?” Dameron muttered.

Through the bond, Ben showed Rey what he wanted to do. “Will you help me?” he asked her.

The Force gleamed mirrorbright, and she wrapped her arm around his waist. Together, they sank into the calm pool within them where the dyad’s energy glowed strongest, and they each raised a hand to either side of Dameron’s face.

“What, this again?” the pilot barked. “Stay the hell out of my head, you guys!”

“She’s here,” Rey murmured.

“She who? Who’s here?”

Tears welled behind Ben’s closed eyelids and gathered on his eyelashes. He let them fall as an offering to the woman who had cried so many tears over him; the woman who had given him life. Twice, he suspected.

“Finn! Maz? Chewie?!” Dameron squeaked.

“Be still, Poe. We can’t show her to you if you don’t let us in,” Rey murmured.

“Show me _who_ , Rey? What the hell is—”

“Poe. _Be still_ ,” Rey insisted with the weight of the Force behind her words.

Even though Ben could see his mother perfectly in his mind, he opened his eyes to watch her step out from amongst the trees, a sylvan spirit in white. She joined them on the footpath and lowered her cowl to reveal the smooth, young face that Ben remembered from his childhood.

“How...how is this possible?” Dameron gasped.

“Try not to think about it too hard,” Rey suggested. She and Ben lowered their hands, the gesture no longer necessary now that Poe was cooperating.

“My two boys,” Leia Organa intoned.

Dameron reeled back, tripping on one of the toys the porgs had left in the grass. “You’re my _mother_?” he burst out. “My parents weren’t really my parents? And Ben is...kriff, is Ben my _brother_?”

Leia cocked an eyebrow at Poe and waited.

It only took him a moment. “Oh. You meant...like figuratively,” he said.

It wasn’t easy for Ben’s mother to speak through the dyad conduit, and if she did she would have just said something sarcastic, so Ben spoke for her. “She loves you like a son,” he said. 

“Loves? As in, present tense?”

“She’ll always be with you,” Rey told the pilot.

“Well I guess that explains the disappearing body. I wasn’t sure how I was gonna explain that to you, Solo.” Dameron finally stopped gawking and drew himself up. “I...I love you, too. Leia.” He started to take a step toward Leia’s ghost, but then planted his foot on the ground again. His palms clenched and unclenched reflexively at his sides. 

Ben’s mother placed a hand over her heart and inclined her head.

“You were there for her when I wasn’t, Poe. I thank you for that,” Ben said.

For once, it seemed that Poe Dameron was speechless.

Leia glanced at Ben, then down at the pocket where he’d started fidgeting with her signet ring again, and a beaming smile spread across her face. Ben shook his head once, and his mother pressed her lips together, content to keep his secret. 

“Daughter of my heart,” she addressed Rey instead, in the style her own adoptive parents had used with her on formal occasions. “We will speak again soon. Just us girls,” she winked less formally.

“I’d love that,” Rey said, and Ben tightened his arm around her to get closer, always closer.

Together, Ben and Rey released the threads of the conduit, and with one last enigmatic smile for all of them, Leia Organa slipped away into the Force once more.

“So. Are we good?” Rey asked Dameron.

The Resistance leader sighed in defeat. “Yeah, yeah. Kylo Ren died on Kef Bir.”

As they all started walking out of the forest together, Ben bumped his hip against Rey to let her know that the mind trick she’d just pulled hadn’t gone unnoticed.

 _That’s not the Jedi way_ , he teased her over the bond.

 _You know the dyad code_ , she sent back. _From now on, we make our own way_.

“Yes, we do,” Ben said.

“Did you say something? Hey! Beebee? Artoo!” Dameron exclaimed. “Where are you guys off to in such a hurry?”

The astromechs beeped their greetings to Ben and Rey but rolled past without stopping, shy little D-O hot on their tail. Artoo began to trawl back and forth in front of the cabin, hooting about something his sensors were picking up. BB-8 and D-O zipped around in excited circles, stirring up the porgs that had just settled down in their roost on the new porch. 

“This again?” Threepio huffed as he tottered into view. “I’m terribly sorry, my friends. Artoo’s equipment must be malfunctioning because of the humidity. Artoo, will you come along? There is no one else in the forest! We are clearly quite alone here.” 

Ben and Rey looked at each other and smiled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, and spreading the word about this story. I started writing it to work through my own grief after TROS, but sharing it with all of you is what made Star Wars not only bearable but joyful for me again. Sincerely, thank you.


End file.
